


Special Delivery

by elfenphoenix



Series: Delivery Boy [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alien Abduction, Delivery Boy AU, Keith alone in the desert, M/M, actually not a horror story, despite how the beginning makes it sound, it's just fluff, mystery au, slow burn by my standards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-20
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-16 09:40:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 28,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11250495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elfenphoenix/pseuds/elfenphoenix
Summary: Lance would be annoyed by having to drive to a shack in the middle of nowhere, through a creepy ghost town, every single week, if it weren't for the cute boy who lived there. The only problem is that this boy isn't particularly social, and may even be hiding something. But that's not going to deter Lance, who is certain that he can win over Keith Kogane, no matter how long it takes, or how many secrets he has to learn.





	1. The Shack

There was something about a rickety shack in the middle of nowhere that screamed “horror movie.” Every time Lance went out there to make a delivery (which was often), he dropped the package and got out of there as fast as he could. _No way_ was he going to be the unsuspecting FedEx guy chopped apart by an axe murderer or fed to some kind of monstrous pet. Nope. He might not be able to get out of delivering the packages, unless he wanted to get fired, but there was nothing wrong with keeping the time he spent there at an absolute minimum.

Okay, so chances were, it was just some old guy who hated the sound of human civilization so much that he didn’t want to go near it, even to shop, so he just ordered everything online. Or, at least, that’s what Lance told himself in order to sleep at night. Although he wasn’t sure how they actually got the internet twenty miles away from the nearest functional gas station.

Since Lance was the new guy at the job, he’d naturally been given the delivery that no one else wanted, and ordered to “just deal with it.” Apparently it was perfectly okay for their delivery guys to meet horrible, gruesome deaths, but heaven forbid they smear mud on the company’s good name.

The deliveries were perfectly regular, too-- every Friday, on the dot, there was a new package for “Keith Kogane.”

So, as usual, Lance was spending over an hour of his Friday afternoon driving to the shack. It was in the middle of the desert, too, so not exactly the most exciting drive. Lance would turn the music up and sing along, bouncing around in the driver’s seat along with the beat. As well as the bouncing that came from driving along what looked like it _used_ to be a road, but was little more than chunks of pavement and gravel, now.

As he neared his destination, he drove through the eerie remains of a small town-- old pueblo houses sitting empty and hollow, their windows occasionally catching a slight breeze and moaning like the souls of the dead, a crumbling hotel, the bones of a long-dry gas station…

Yeah, as mentioned earlier, it _screamed_ “horror movie.”

Even after passing through the town, the shack was a few miles out. As Lance got closer, he glanced down at his inventory list.

“ _Keith Kogane-- *Sensitive Material*-- SIGN-ONLY.”_

Lance groaned. Well, he was definitely going to die today. He couldn’t just drop the package and run… he had to actually _meet_ the resident.

He pulled the truck up nearby-ish the front of the house (since there was no driveway to speak of), whispered a quick Spanish prayer to God to please let him see his mom one more time, then grabbed the box from the back of the truck and hauled it up to the front door.

He set it down on the dirt in front of the door, readied his pad, took a deep breath, and knocked. Every muscle in his body tensed, ready to bolt if it came to that.

“Just drop it in front of the door!” he heard called from inside.

“Sorry, I can’t; you gotta sign for it, or else I’ll have to come back tomorrow.”

Silence.

 _Please let it be a harmless old guy_ , he thought.

The door handle started to turn, and Lance braced himself.

It cracked open, and a face appeared in the doorway, slightly hidden in the shadow of the door.

Well, it was _not_ an old guy.

The pale face peeking out at Lance was framed by tufts of unkempt black hair, marked only by the line of chapped but delicate-looking lips puckered into a slight frown, and the glint of the desert sun on his eyes-- dark, like the color of the night sky, a black that shone with violet.

Well, if this was a horror movie, then Lance suddenly had no problem being the first victim. Sign him up for a gruesome death any day.

He was pretty sure his jaw was moving, but no words were coming out of his mouth. How was he so _pretty_? How could someone live out in the middle of nowhere and still be gorgeous enough to leave Lance Mcclain, womanizer extraordinaire, completely speechless?

“Um, what am I supposed to sign?”

Lance snapped out of it, closing his jaw and clearing his throat to return to some semblance of formality. “Um, first, I just have to check, are you Keith Kogane?”

“Yeah,” he answered, still hidden by the door.

“Okay, well, just need your autograph right here, and I’ll be on my way.” He held out the pad, still trying not to stare and failing completely.

Keith stepped out from behind the door just enough to take the pad from Lance’s hands and scribble out a signature, handing it back to him. “Is that all?”

“Yeah, but if you wanted to leave your phone number here, I would _personally_ ensure that your packages always arrive--”

The door had already shut in his face, leaving him outside, along with the package in front of the door.

“--Safely. Um, do you need help carrying the box in? It’s pretty heavy.”

“NO.”

Damn. Totally shot down. But, well, Lance Mcclain was not one to give up without a fight, at least not when it came to romance. He’d get that boy to open up eventually. Somehow.

“Alright, well, I’ll see you next week, then, probably!”

No answer.

~~~~~

And yes, Lance was back, the very next week, with another very-heavy package. He’d thought about bringing flowers, but he wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep them safe the whole drive out into the desert. Which was probably a good call, since Keith’s door was shut tight, and shouting “Special Delivery!” did not bring him to the door. He couldn’t really be persistent about it, though, since if Keith called the company to complain, Lance would get fired in a heartbeat.

Disappointed, he left the package in front of the door and headed out. He’d have to try a different strategy.

~~~~~

Lance returned to the shack in the desert, week after week, and every time, it was the same story: package on the doorstep, no answer from inside. He was starting to lose hope, and his friends-slash-coworkers were really starting to doubt him.

“I’m not making this up, Pidge! He was ridiculously pretty! Annoyingly pretty! No one is supposed to look that good out in the middle of the desert! Well, except me.”

“Uh, I don’t want to sound like I don’t believe you, because I do, but… you sure you didn’t just see a mirage?” Hunk asked, hefting one of the boxes and sliding it into the back of his delivery truck.

Lance narrowed his eyes at him. “It was _not_ a mirage. I’ve been to that shack like twenty times already. It’s real.”

“Just trying to look out for you, man,” Hunk replied with a shrug. “I mean, it’s the desert. Maybe you just got really thirsty.”

From behind her computer, Pidge snickered, and then piped up, “No, Lance is probably right, Hunk. If it was a mirage, Lance would have seen a beautiful woman, not an antisocial _guy_.”

“Good point.”

Lance glared at them. “Missing the point, guys. I just want to see him again! Is that too much to ask?”

Pidge rolled her eyes. “I am _not_ changing the package label to ‘sign-only’ just so you can get desert-boy to come out of his door. Even if he _does_ have… how did you say it? ‘Eyes the color of the night sky’?” she said, mockingly.

“Well, he _did_. And fine, I don’t need your help!”

“Yes you do,” Pidge pointed out. “I’m in charge of inventory. It’s literally my job.”

“Oh whatever! I’m going out on my delivery route!”

~~~~~

Lance went to drop the box off at the front door, as usual, when, to his surprise and amazement, it cracked open to reveal Keith leaning out of it. He looked even cuter when he wasn’t half-hidden.

Lance snapped upright, smiling like an idiot before he even knew he was doing so. “A-HA! You _are_ real! Take _that_ , Pidge!”

Keith blinked. “Um, yeah, of course I’m real. Why else would you be delivering packages all the way out here?”

“Aliens, escaped criminals, demons, human-eating monsters… I’ve had lots of time to think of possible horrifying scenarios because have you realized you live on the edges of a really fricking creepy ghost town?”

Keith scrunched up his face, moved to go back inside, then stopped and turned back to Lance, sighing, “hey… are you hungry?”

 _In more ways than one._ “Yeah, a bit. Why?”

Keith really seemed like he didn’t want to say it, but Lance was hanging on his every word. If he had a tail, it would be wagging. The pretty boy was real! He was talking to him! This was the greatest thing that had happened to him all day! All week!

“Um, well, my refrigerator just broke, and it’s gonna be at least a week until I can get a new one. I have a bunch of canned food and stuff I can eat until then, but I don’t want what’s in there to spoil. So, uh, do you want to help me eat it?”

What a roundabout way to ask Lance if he’d eat dinner with him. The answer was yes, of course, but the underlying meaning was not lost on Lance.

“Sure! Happy to help! Just let me turn off my truck and I’ll come right in!”

“No! I mean, you don’t have to come in… I’ll bring it out.”

“Oh… Okay.” Man, this guy was seriously not social. _Or_ there was something in his house that he didn’t want Lance to see. Which kind of fit the whole horror movie theme, but… whatever.

As promised, by the time Lance returned from turning the truck off, Keith had produced an entire gallon of milk and stacks of tupperware containers from inside and set them on top of the box Lance had brought.

As Lance looked at the assortment, he raised an eyebrow. “How much macaroni and cheese do you _eat_?”

Keith made a face at him. “Oh shut up. I’m not that great of a cook, alright? And there are vegetables in there, too. And some ham, I think.”

Lance laughed, sitting down in the dirt on the other side of the box and picking up one of the containers. “You _think_? Should I be eating this?”

“You don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to,” Keith grumbled, holding out a fork.

“No no, I’m here, I might as well. Besides, it would be rude to refuse.” Not to mention that there was no way in the world Lance was going to waste such a golden opportunity.

They ate in silence for a while, until the thousands of questions struggling to escape Lance became too much for him to hold back. But he didn’t want to go too far. Keith struck him as the kind of person who would escape inwards if you pushed just a _little_ too hard. So he had to stay casual. Chill. Ease into it. Don’t rush, or he’ll have to start all over.

“So, I was kinda curious,” he began, still chewing on his macaroni-and-cheese-with-broccoli-and-something, “what made you want to live all the way out here, by yourself? Don’t you get lonely?”

Keith was quiet for a while, and Lance worried that he’d already gone too far. But then:

“It does get pretty lonely sometimes. But… it’s not that bad. I’ve kind of gotten used to it.”

Lance raised an eyebrow, looking at him over the box. “Dude, your refrigerator just broke and you’re living off of macaroni and cheese. How is that ‘not that bad’?”

Keith blushed a little bit, which Lance took a mental photo of, because it brought his adorableness level from a ten to an eleven.

“It wasn’t supposed to be permanent, anyway!” Keith shot back, getting to his feet, already done eating.

“Oooohhh, so this is just temporary, then? So whatchya up to? Some kind of research project?” Lance thought of Pidge, who he could totally see moving to the middle of nowhere just for a science project, although he was pretty sure even Pidge would have been spooked by the horror-movie ghost town.

Keith bit his lip, seeming unwilling to divulge more information. “Something like that.”

Lance got up, his dish empty, sensing that pushing for more information than that for now might be a bad idea. “Well, sounds legit. Thanks for the food, Keith. And the company.”

Keith smiled a bit, hesitantly, and Lance took another mental photo. Adorableness level straight to fifteen. And here Lance thought he had pretty high standards. “No problem, uh…” he glanced at the name tag clipped to Lance’s lapel, “uh, Lance.”

 _Oh, man, he liked hearing his name come out of that mouth._ But play it cool, Lance. He didn’t want to freak the guy out, make him hide back inside his shack and never come out again.

“Well, I’d better get going. It’s already getting late, and there’s no way I’m driving through that creepy ghost town at night.”

Keith smiled again, starting to take the emptied containers inside as Lance headed to his truck. But then he stopped and turned back, calling out, “is it really that creepy?”

“Oh, definitely,” Lance answered, then felt a mischievous grin creep across his face. “But it’s not so bad when I know that you’re on the other side.” He winked, then turned, proud of his expert-level flirtation. He was _really_ tempted to turn around and check Keith’s expression, but doing so would have ruined his stellar exit. All in all, he picked aesthetic over curiosity. As long as he was patient, he could always try a bit more next time.

Friday was definitely the best day of the week.


	2. Your Eyes

“Pics, or it didn’t happen,” Pidge said with a wicked grin.

Lance groaned. “Can you just trust me on something for once?”

“Nope. I’m still not convinced that this mystery boy actually exists, considering he refuses to let you inside his house and has told you _nothing_ about himself.”

“Yeah, I think he’s been single so long, he’s starting to get desperate,” Hunk agreed.

“What kind of friends _are_ you?!” Lance complained, settling back in his chair. Hunk and Pidge came over every Friday after work, as a bit of a ritual, so they could hang out. Whatever the three of them decided to do changed from week to week. Sometimes they would play games, of either the board or video variety. On very rare occasions (since Pidge didn’t often feel like being around big crowds of people), they would go out and enjoy a night on the town. But most Fridays they spent like this one-- sitting in Lance’s living room (or, the whole apartment, really, since it was only really one room, unless you counted the bathroom), gearing up for a movie marathon. Today’s selection was the original Lord of the Rings trilogy, extended editions, because they’d gone through the Hobbit trilogy the week before.

Right now, though, they were sitting in the living room, debating whether Keith Kogane was real, or just a figment of Lance’s imagination.

“And besides, I _did_ learn something about him. He’s out there for a research project, and sometimes he feels lonely,” he said triumphantly.

“Oooooh, you’re practically in his head,” Pidge replied, sarcasm dripping from her voice. “And he never definitively said he was out there for a research project. Only ‘something like that’. Like I said, pics or it didn’t happen.”

Lance sighed. “Okay, fine. I’ll see if I can get pictures. Will you be happy, then?”

“Only if you don’t get abducted by aliens or eaten by a werewolf, first,” Pidge laughed.

Lance threw a pillow at her. “Oh, just shut up and start the movie already! The usual marathon rules-- last one to fall asleep is the winner!”

“Aw, man,” Hunk groaned, “I always lose these challenges.”

“Start!”

~~~~~

The next week, as promised, Keith’s new fridge was ready to be delivered. Or at least Lance assumed it was a fridge, based on its weight. But this was good. He could use this.

He drove out to the shack, whistling to himself the whole way, even as he parked the truck and headed to the front door. He smiled to himself as he knocked, pleased with himself for making such a perfect plan.

“Hello~, Mr. Kogane? Are you in there?”

“What do you want?”

“Well, I have your delivery in the back of my truck, but it’s heavy, so I don’t know if I can get it to you without damaging it. Do you think you can help me unload it?”

He heard shuffling from inside, and then Keith was opening the door and stepping out into the sunlight.

“Okay, what do you need me to do?”

Lance’s smile widened. His plan had worked! Truthfully, he had a small cart for unloading big boxes tucked away into the back of his truck just for situations like this, but Keith didn’t need to know that.

Lance showed him to the back of the truck, pointing out the box labeled for Keith Kogane. In truth, it wasn’t a very big fridge-- more of a mini fridge, but it was still just a bit too big for Lance to lift without any help.

As they worked together to get the fridge down off the truck and to the door, Lance made small talk.

“I’m kinda surprised there’s internet all the way out here, so you can order stuff online. I mean, my phone doesn’t even have service!”

“It’s satellite internet,” Keith replied, his voice just a bit strained from the weight of the fridge.

“Woah, seriously? Isn’t that expensive?!”

“Yeah, a bit,” Keith groaned, setting his end of the box down in the dirt. “But it’s better than nothing.”

Lance shook his head in disbelief as he straightened up. “You must get paid a lot for this research project.” Okay, so that one wasn’t small talk. More of a leading question.

But Keith took the bait, saying, “oh, I don’t get paid for being out here.”

Lance raised an eyebrow. “So how _do_ you pay for this stuff?”

Keith bit his lip, as if he’d suddenly realized that he’d revealed more than he’d intended. But he answered, “my brother left me a pretty big inheritance when he… left. Well, nothing huge. But it’s enough.”

Lance felt his smile disappear. “Oh… I’m sorry. About your brother. Were you close?”

Keith swallowed, turning away. “Yeah.” But, oddly enough, he sounded less sad and more… angry. There was obviously more to this picture. Lance figured that he probably shouldn’t pursue it for now, though.

“Well, let’s get this thing inside,” he said in an attempt to change the subject, reaching for the door handle.

Lance didn’t actually _see_ what happened next. It happened way too fast. One second he was reaching for the door, and the next he was pinned against the wall with a gleaming silver knife at his neck, looking straight down into Keith’s violet-black eyes.

“Do _not_ go into my house,” Keith warned.

Lance blinked, not sure _at all_ how he was supposed to react.

“Woah, how’d you learn to move like that?!” he blurted, although he was keenly aware of the blade at his neck.

Keith smirked. “My brother was a SpecOps officer. He taught me some things.”

“That’s hot.”

“...what.”

“What?”

To be honest, the words had slipped out of Lance’s mouth before he even knew what he was saying. He had to remind himself of his current situation, which allowed him to view the confusion on Keith’s face in exquisite detail. Which was enjoyable, to a point. Said “point” being that of the knife at his neck, so he’d probably better try to get _out_ of the situation.

“Uhhh… I mean, it’s hot, out in the desert. Makes you do stupid stuff without realizing it. So I’m just gonna _not_ go in your house, and go back to my truck, and we’ll call it good, okay?” To demonstrate his point, Lance raised his hands next to his head in a gesture of submission.

Slowly, Keith pulled away, looking guarded again. Lance cursed, internally. All of that work, down the drain. He was starting to lose patience. He just wanted to know more about this boy… so much that it was starting to dig at him, even when he was nowhere near the desert shack.

But he’d already done too much, for that day. He rubbed at his neck, where the knife had been, mumbled a “see ya,” and headed back to his truck.

~~~~~

“WHAT?! He held a knife to your neck, and you’re gonna go _back_?!” Hunk stared at him in horror and amazement.

Lance shrugged. “Well, yeah. Unless _you_ wanna go out there instead.”

“No way, man,” Hunk replied instantly, shuddering. “That guy sounds nuts.”

“Well, to be fair, Lance _was_ trying to go into his house without permission,” Pidge suggested.

“Oh, so you _do_ believe he exists now? What happened to ‘pics or it didn’t happen’?” Lance complained.

She shrugged. “If you were making up a story about being held at knifepoint, I’m pretty sure it would have ended in you either heroically winning in a fight, or making out. Or both. Since it ends in you walking away with your tail between your legs, it’s obviously true,” she said with a smirk.

Lance sat down on top of Pidge’s desk, crossing his arms and huffing. “But what should I _do_? And don’t say ‘give up’, Hunk.”

“Wasn’t going to.”

“Yes you were.”

“Yes I was.”

Lance sighed. “I’m afraid I’ve already pushed him too far, but every time I see him, I just want to know more. I want to know everything about him, y’know?”

Pidge faked a gagging sound, and Lance turned to glare at her. She shoved him off of her desk, then leaned back in her chair, her smirk fading into a thoughtful frown. “Why don’t you just avoid the sensitive stuff, then? I know it’s what you most want to know, but maybe you should stick with the safe stuff for now, you know? I mean, he doesn’t know anything about _you_ , either. Why should he trust you enough to tell you anything?”

Lance thought about this, then nodded, smiling at Pidge. “Thanks! That was more help than I thought it’d be!”

She frowned. “What’s _that_ supposed to mean?”

But Lance was already heading to the door, shouting that he’d see them later for game night.

~~~~~

In a surprising turn of luck, Keith was already outside when Lance arrived the next week, putting duct tape around one of the window frames. He turned when he saw Lance pull up, squinting against the sunlight.

Lance held the package under one arm as he walked up, a small cooler in the other hand. He looked curiously up at the window. “Is rain really an issue?”

Keith rolled his eyes, threading his arm through the hoop of the duct tape and wearing it like a bracelet, which Lance also thought was cute. “It’s because of the _dust_ , idiot.”

“Oh. Well, I have your usual special delivery, here. I’m guessing… a shipment of to-order fresh vegetables?”

Keith raised an eyebrow. “How did you know?”

Lance grinned. “I am an expert at guessing what’s inside boxes. My mom started hiding our Christmas presents when I was ten because otherwise I’d find out what was inside before we opened them.”

“Nice,” Keith replied, flatly, taking the box from under Lance’s arm.

“I know that was sarcasm, but I’m gonna pretend you actually meant it.”

Keith rolled his eyes, about to go back into the shack, but Lance reached out and grabbed his hand. “Wait!”

He dropped the hand immediately, not wanting a repeat of the previous week. “I mean, uh, I… brought you something.” He held the cooler out in front of himself, opened it, and pulled out a chocolate ice cream bar, still in its packing. “I figured that you probably haven’t had ice cream in a while, since you can’t really mail-order it, so… I brought you some.”

Keith’s eyes widened, and he gingerly took the ice cream from Lance’s hand. “How did you keep it frozen? It’s a long drive through the desert…”

“A buttload of ice, to be honest. And almost all of it’s melted already, so if you don’t want it, I don’t think I can take it back with me.” He reached into the cooler, pulling out a second ice cream bar, this one orange cream flavored. “Brought one for me, too.”

Keith smiled, plunking down into the dirt in front of the house, pulling off the wrapper. “Thanks, Lance. I mean it.”

 _YES!_ Perfect! Everything was working out. He felt like he was floating.

Lance sat down next to him, but not too close, opening his own ice cream, wondering where he should go from there.

Fortunately, he didn’t have to.

“Don’t _you_ live in the desert, too? How do you not worry about dust instead of rain?” Keith asked.

“It’s not that big of a problem in the city. Especially since _our_ windows aren’t super old,” he explained between bites of deliciously cold ice cream. Keith glared at him, and he laughed and went on, “but more than that, it’s just that I haven’t actually lived here my whole life. My family’s from Cuba, but we moved out here when I was a freshman in high school because my dad got a job.”

“Really? You don’t… seem like an immigrant.”

“Racist.”

“That’s not what I meant!” Keith replied, sounding genuinely apologetic behind the defensiveness.

Lance laughed. “You mean because I don’t have an accent or anything like that? Practice, my friend. I used to sit in front of my mirror and try to practice sounds the way Americans on TV did, since I was a little kid. Also, my dad was born in New York. I guess I could have learned it from him, too. The accent, at least. My teachers _wish_ I’d learned fancy English as well as he had.”

Keith snickered at that, and Lance felt his heartbeat speed up. Shit, he wanted to hear that more often. He was pretty sure he could live through any horror movie scenario as long as he could hear Keith laugh.

His ice cream was melting fast, beginning to run down his hand in cold, sticky rivulets. He quickly got to work slurping it up, then hurried to eat the rest while Keith asked, “was it hard to move?”

“Not that bad, really,” Lance replied, licking up the last of his ice cream. “I mean, legally, it was a nightmare, because of getting citizenship when you’re Hispanic, plus the mistrust of Cubans, and all that, but the actual move wasn’t that bad. My friends, Pidge and Hunk, really looked out for me. I still hate the desert, though.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I miss rain. And the ocean. I miss snorkeling just off the beach, or seeing who could dive the deepest when they jumped off the big rock… The way the breeze would kind of blow the saltwater smell into our house, or the way the sunlight shines off of the water… it was blue. Everything was blue-- the sky, the water… like they were reflecting each other. Here it’s just red and brown and white, for ever and ever. Only the sky is blue.”

“And your eyes,” Keith blurted.

“Huh?”

Keith backpedaled, his face turning red as he stammered, “uh, I meant… it’s weird… that your eyes are so blue. They kind of look like the sky right now.” He seemed to wince at his own words, avoiding looking at Lance.

Lance’s heart sang. But he didn’t jump on it, didn’t let himself ruin the peace they’d been able to find. Instead, he leaned his head back against the shack’s rickety wall, looking up at the cloudless blue. “That’s funny… because I always thought yours looked like the night sky.”

He turned his head to look at Keith, who was still looking away from him, up at the sky. Pink still tinged his cheeks, and he looked adorable. “I guess we’re like day and night, then.”

Lance grinned like an idiot, wondering if maybe he wasn’t being totally rejected, after all. They sat in silence for a while after that, and for right now, silence was comfortable. Honesty was comfortable. Maybe if he wanted to find out Keith’s secrets, he had to give up all of his own, first.

And for some reason, he was okay with that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have Pidge as an inventory person mainly because I don't imagine her as really enjoying doing heavy lifting. Not that I think of her as the secretary type. Also keep in mind that she technically outranks Lance and Hunk, hehehe. And KEITH! Goodness he's such a cutie~.


	3. Fifteen Questions

“Boom. Picture,” Lance declared triumphantly, displaying the image on his phone only a few inches from Pidge’s nose.

She pushed the phone away from her face so she could actually see it. “Huh. I guess he is pretty cute.”

Lance snatched the phone back, clutching it to his chest. “You can’t have him! He’s _mine_.”

Her expression flattened in annoyance. “Seriously? Number one, he’s _not_ yours-- you’re not even close to dating, and Number Two--”

“I know, I know, ‘Pidge the _ace_ technician’.” Lance interrupted.

“ _You’re_ the one who came up with the joke.”

“Oh, whatever. The important thing is that you _know_ he’s real. I have proof!”

“We’ve believed you for a while, Lance,” Hunk said, setting the Monopoly board up in the middle of the living room.

“What?!”

“Yeah, we’ve just been messing with you-- I know that there’s no way you’d spend so much time in that creepy ghost town for no reason, so it makes way more sense that there’s someone you find cute out there. The problem is that I still think he’s _dangerous_ , dude. I mean, who in the world could go months at a time without ice cream?! In the desert!” He shook his head, passing out Monopoly money.

“I don’t think he’s really _that_ dangerous…”

“Knife to the neck, Lance. Knife to the neck.”

“Okay, so he’s a bit _defensive,_ but honestly that was kind of a turn-on.”

Pidge gagged, for real this time, squeezing her eyes shut. “Oh, gross. I do _not_ want to know about your kinks, Lance.”

“Pigeon, we’ve been friends for five years. You’re gonna learn them eventually.”

“Call me ‘Pigeon’ again and _I’ll_ hold a knife to your neck,” she growled.

Lance grinned to himself, grabbing one of the dice to roll for turn order. That particular exchange was as old as their friendship. Pidge claimed to hate being called ‘Pigeon’, but she would never actually do anything to Lance if he did.

“I just don’t get why you’re so fixated on this guy,” Hunk worried. “Normally you move on pretty quickly. I mean, yeah he’s cute, and you’re curious, but isn’t that too shallow for you to be this… persistent?”

Lance thought about this, recognizing that Hunk _did_ have a valid point. As difficult as Keith was to get along with, even _Lance_ would have given up at this point. Yet he couldn’t make himself do it.

“I dunno… I guess… it just feels like he needs someone. He acts like he doesn’t, that he’s fine in the desert all alone, but… I don’t think anyone can really be happy like that. I guess it’s just kind of nice to be there for him… even if it’s just as the dumb delivery guy. Make him smile, laugh, when I don’t think he does it very often… I like doing that. Is that a bad thing?”

They both were quiet for a while, and then Pidge sighed and said, “okay, we get it. You rolled a six, idiot, so you go first. Hurry and roll.”

~~~~~

“Special delivery for Keith Kogane!” Lance called out before he’d even left the truck. “Is this just a bunch of milk? It says ‘same-day delivery’ and it feels sloshy.”

Keith was already opening the door. “I guess you are pretty good at that. Isn’t that kind of a legal problem, considering your job?”

“Trust me, you have my job for long enough? You learn not to ask questions about what’s inside,” Lance answered as he handed the box holding the milk jugs over to Keith.

Keith raised an eyebrow. “Really? Because I don’t think you learned that lesson at _all_.”

Lance grinned. “You’re a little different.”

Blinking, Keith pulled away, his eyebrows knitting together. “Me? Why me?”

“Because I’m interested in you,” Lance replied with a shrug, knowing and fully intending its double meaning. “Most people? I don’t even _want_ to know. But there’s just something about you. I want to know everything.”

So there he goes: honesty. This could backfire on him spectacularly, but after his last encounter with Keith, it was getting impossible to hold back.

Keith stepped back, one hand already on his hip, where Lance could clearly see the hilt of his knife sticking out of its sheath. “You don’t want to know.”

“I really, really do.”

“Stop trying to find out!”

“Why?” Lance finally asked, trying to keep his cool, stick to his plan. “Just… start small. I’ll tell you anything you want to know about me, too… We can play Twenty Questions!”

“NO.”

Lance backed up, hands up, just in case Keith decided to pull out his knife. “Special rules, okay? I promise to not ask you _anything_ about your older brother, what’s inside your shack, or why you’re all the way out here. But you can ask me anything you want. I have nothing to hide,” he added with a slightly cocky shrug.

Keith eyed him cautiously, then shook his head and started to make his way back to his shack. “No. Not happening.”

“Okay, how about I get one question per week?” he called out just before Keith went inside.

Keith stopped in the doorway, looking back at him. “Just one?”

“Yeah. Every time I come to deliver something, you answer one question, and ask me one. I’ll even let you go first. I mean, hell, if I’ve gone too far, you could just have someone else deliver your packages, or complain to the company about me, get me fired… and you never have to see me again. You’ve really got all the power here.”

Lance was gambling, and he knew it. He hated the results being out of his control. It felt like playing Monopoly against Pidge-- she already had almost all of the property, and he was just going around and around the board, hoping to land on Free Parking. He closed his eyes, expecting to get pushed away, but hoping he wouldn’t be.

“...okay.”

Lance’s eyes fluttered open, and he blinked up at Keith. “Okay?” he asked, sounding a bit surprised, even to himself.

“Yeah. Okay. I’ll play. But you can’t lie about _anything_.”

“I swear on my _bisabuela’s_ grave to not tell you a single lie.” It was a pretty serious oath, at least in Lance’s family.

“Alright, then. So I go first?”

“Yup.”

Keith paused, as if still wondering what he should do, then asked, “do you actually _like_ coming all the way out here every week?”

Lance grinned. That question was _easy_. “Oh yeah, definitely. It’s my favorite part of the week.”

“Why?”

Lance wagged his finger in the air, clicking his tongue. “Uh-uh, you get _one_ question per turn. Now it’s mine.”

Keith looked annoyed, but grunted a “fine.”

“So, my turn!”

“Ask away.”

Lance felt a smile play at his lips as the question teased at his vocal cords.

“...what’s your favorite color?”

Keith blinked. “Really? _That’s_ what you’re starting with?”

“Gotta start somewhere. Might as well go with the basics,” Lance answered with a grin.

Keith rolled his eyes. “It’s red.”

“Red, huh?” Lance thought about it, imagining Keith swathed in red, rather than his simple black t-shirt. “It suits you.”

He thought he saw Keith blush a little, but he wasn’t sure, because he’d immediately turned away to go back into the shack.

“See you next week, Lance,” he said, the door shutting behind him.

Lance headed out, tossing the idea of Keith wearing red around in his head. He was already halfway back to the city before he realized the significance behind Keith’s words: he’d said “see you next week.” Which meant Lance could come back. He’d worried he was pushing too far, risking too much, and yet somehow Keith just kept letting him do it.

The whole rest of the drive home, he just kept grinning to himself, pleased with the day’s results.

“Red, huh?”

~~~~~

And that was how it went after that, week after week. It was definitely Lance’s favorite part of the week, even if all he did was pull up, hand Keith the usual delivery, exchange questions, then leave. He looked forward to it every time, spending most of the rest of the week trying to think of what his next question should be, wondering if Keith was doing the same, wondering what Keith would ask him.

It always went the same way, too. Keith’s question first, Lance’s answer, and then they’d switch.

“What even is a ‘ _bisabuela’_?

Lance laughed, handing Keith his box of assorted chocolates. “You couldn’t just look it up online?”

“I don’t trust translation software.”

“Good call. It means ‘great-grandmother’.”

“Okay. That makes sense. Your turn.”

“What’s your favorite movie?”

“Ummmmmm… Lilo and Stitch, maybe?”

This made Lance smile. A tough guy with a knife, and yet his favorite movie was Disney. Keith was a lot _softer_ than he pretended to be.

Lance was also pretty sure that Keith looked forward to their meetings, too, although maybe that was just wishful thinking. But ever since they’d started the Twenty Questions game, Keith was always already sitting outside when Lance got there, making himself busy with one thing or another.

“What’s your greatest fear?”

“Spiders.”

“Pretty Cliche.”

“It’s the hair, dude. Only cute things are supposed to be fuzzy, but spiders just destroy that rule,” he explained with a shudder. “Also, I got a nasty spider bite on my neck when I was four, and my sister got pictures of how swollen it got, and used to show them to me if she felt like being mean. I think I was traumatized by that. At least my dad _tried_ to comfort me by telling me I was gonna turn into Spiderman.”

Keith laughed. “Okay, Spiderman. Your turn.”

“Are you a cat person, or a dog person?”

Keith contemplated that. “I like both, but… cats, maybe?”

“Oooooh, good answer.”

And sometimes, Lance could get away with spending just a _bit_ of extra time there. Helping Keith fix the water pump out back, even though neither of them had a clue what they were doing. When Keith made ramen noodles instead of mac  & cheese, which he had Lance try, just to prove that he could cook something besides mac & cheese (adorable! Of course Lance had humored him). Taking back a massive load of the cardboard that Keith had accumulated from all of his deliveries (while also discovering, to his delight, that Keith _loved_ bubble wrap). Looking in awe at Keith’s very-sharp knife collection. Which also included a sizable Japanese katana.

It was always fun-- not like in a roller-coaster ride, but peaceful. Worthwhile. It made Lance feel happier every time.

“Do you watch a lot of horror movies?”

Not that much, since Hunk doesn’t really like them, and they always do movie night together.

“Are you a morning person?”

Actually, yes. Keith didn’t really have any problem getting up not long after dawn, an idea that horrified Lance.

They learned a lot about each other, just from this small game. Lance learned that Keith was allergic to certain mold spores, was slightly nearsighted, was adopted, spoke a little bit of Japanese and Korean, hated the smell of vinegar, was more of a Digimon kid than a Pokemon kid, preferred to shower in water so hot it feels like his skin is melting, had a scar on his right shoulder, almost dropped out of high school junior year, and was still hoping he could go to flight school despite that.

And Lance had no problem telling Keith about himself, often going on tangents related to the questions, telling stories about life in Cuba, or crazy things he did with Pidge and Hunk after moving to the States, even the people he’d dated in the past. Although he tended to dance around that last one as much as possible without lying. And the whole while, Keith would just sit and listen, sometimes adding just a teensy bit about himself or his own brother, making it easy for Lance to just sit there and talk for hours at a time.

Keith seemed a bit hesitant about the game at first, asking Lance only surface-level questions to the same extent that Lance was asking him. Did Lance have any siblings? Yes, four of them-- three sisters and one little brother. What frustrated him more than anything? Getting compared to other people.

But as the weeks went by, and Lance’s visits to the desert shack got longer, he got braver, sometimes even asking things Lance wasn’t sure he knew the answer to.

“If you were in a situation where you had to save a bunch of people and be a hero, or save one person you cared a lot about, which would you choose?”

And he joked about of course doing _both_ , being a hero _and_ getting the girl (or boy), but the real answer was that he didn't know. He’d like to think he’d do the better thing and save the majority, but he couldn’t promise that if it was his sister or brother, or Pidge and Hunk, or even Keith, in a situation where he’d have to let them die, he couldn’t promise that he’d make the heroic choice. Maybe that made him selfish.

“It doesn’t make you selfish. Just… human,” Keith said.

“You think?”

Keith nodded, looking away. “Yeah, I mean… I’d want to save you, too.”

But there were plenty of other questions where that came from. What was his favorite class in school? He actually liked the arts. He found drawing, painting, and music especially to be nice ways to relax. Why did he start working as a delivery guy? Well, it actually pays more than a lot of unskilled-labor jobs in the area, gave him some small benefits, and was a way to work alongside Hunk and Pidge.

But those were the shallower ones. As time went by, Keith got much deeper with his questions, as if trying to dig fossils of truth out of the clay earth of the charming facade Lance put around himself, chipping away just a bit more of it each time.

“If you could move back to Cuba right now, would you?”

...No, probably not. He missed his home, but he couldn’t abandon what he had right now. His friends, his job… he was starting to figure himself out, finally. Find out what he wanted to with his future. If he backed out now, he’d feel like he was just quitting.

“What do you want to do in the future?”

Well, he wasn’t going to live in the desert the rest of his life. Although his Fridays with Keith made the desert a bit prettier to his eyes than it had been before, he still didn’t really feel at home there. He thought, once he saved up enough money, he’d move to one of the cities on the southern coast and be a lifeguard until he got a higher-paying job. What that would be, he hadn’t figured out yet.

“Maybe I’ll be a teacher,” he joked.

“Why not? I think you’d be good at it.”

“ _Me_? Really? My grades were always lousy in school. How could I teach kids?”

“Well… you’re just… easy to talk to. I liked teachers like that. It made me actually want to learn from them.”

Lance thought about it, frowning. Actually, it didn’t seem that bad of an idea. Maybe he’d teach Spanish. Or art. Or music.

“Can you play an instrument?” Keith asked him the next time.

“Oh, I am an _expert_ with the plastic recorder.”

“That’s it?”

Lance laughed. “I can play the guitar, too. I’m not an expert, but I like it. Maybe I’ll bring it with me sometime and show you.”

And Keith smiled, saying, “I’d like that.” And oh boy, did that make Lance happy.

Still more questions, week after week. He kind of liked that Keith got so personal. It made this a challenge. He almost didn’t believe he’d been doing this for half a year, now.

“Have you ever been in love? Like, really?”

It took a while for Lance to admit that… no, he didn’t think he had been. Oh, he’d dated people, even pretended to be Pidge’s boyfriend once to get a creepy guy off of her back (they didn’t speak of that), but he couldn’t really say that he’d loved them. It was never that they’d done anything wrong, it just hadn’t felt… right.

“What’s your _favorite_ part about the desert?” Keith asked him. “I mean, I know you hate it, but what’s one thing you like about it?”

“You.”

~~~~~

It was dusk by the time Lance got back to town to drop off his delivery truck, which was becoming more and more common.

When he went inside, though, Hunk and Pidge were nowhere to be found. Were they already at his apartment for movie night? Hunk had a spare key to the door, but normally they didn’t actually go in without Lance there.

Now that he was in town and actually had service, he pulled out his cell phone and dialed Hunk’s number. When his friend picked up, he asked, “hey, where are you guys?”

“Sorry, we got kinda bored waiting, so we just went home.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I texted you, but you probably didn’t get it while you were, you know… out there.”

Lance pulled the phone away from his ear to look at his notifications. Sure enough, there were five messages from Hunk and one from Pidge. He put the phone back to his ear, sighing. “Okay, well, see you at work tomorrow.”

“Yeah, sure. Hey, d’you think we can do movie night on a different day? You stay out pretty late on Fridays, now, so you’re always exhausted by the time you get back.”

“Yeah, we’ll talk about it with Pidge tomorrow. I’m sorry for making you guys wait for me. I don’t want to make you feel like I don’t care about you anymore, I just…”

Hunk was quiet for a while on the other end. “You’re in pretty deep, man.”

“I know.”

“Do you think he knows that?”

“Maybe. I hope so.”

“Just… take care of yourself, okay? And don’t get lost out there. You’ve still got friends and family back here.”

“I know.”

“Alright. See ya, Lance.”

“See ya.”

He hung up, heading back outside the building and looking up at the sky over the city, the desert. A black that shone with violet. He did like that sky, if nothing else. Loved it, even. Maybe a bit too much.


	4. A Step Forward

Lance felt a bit better about missing movie night after they collectively decided to move it to Tuesdays, since they had Wednesdays off instead of Sundays. No post on Sundays, but FedEx is fair game. That’s what it’s like to work a low-wage job, honestly.

Pidge got over her annoyance by completely demolishing him in Mario Kart, not only never letting him win, but also mercilessly saving blue shells to use _only_ on him if he ever managed to pass her.

In addition, he deliberately avoided bringing up Keith, instead talking about movie trailers they were excited about, mutual distaste for much of the music on the radio nowadays (although Lance maintained his love of Bruno Mars, and they all agreed that you couldn’t go wrong with Beyoncé) and trash-talking the gamer guys who thought they could actually beat Pidge at _any_ MMORPG they thought they were experts in, especially if they cried about losing to a _girl_.

After Pidge kicked their butts on Rainbow Road _again_ , Lance set his controller down and leaned back on his hands with a sigh. “Hey, do you guys ever think about what you’re gonna do _next_?”

“What do you mean?” Hunk asked, accepting a bowl of grapes from Pidge and popping one in his mouth.

“I dunno, it just feels kind of… in-between right now. There’s no way we’re at the this-is-what-I-wanna-do-with-the-rest-of-my-life stage. But what _is_ that stage? It’s just something I’ve been thinking about recently. It always felt like we were all trying not to think about it.”

“Well… I’m just trying to pay off my student loans for now. Then I was thinking of taking that job in Germany my brother talked about,” Pidge answered, uncrossing her legs and stretching. Of course, Pidge, the little genius, had entered college two years early and graduated at the same rate. Lance knew pretty well that she was worth so much more than as a FedEx inventory manager. But it was still hard to imagine her all the way in Germany.

“What about you, Hunk?”

“I dunno. I might open a restaurant. But I could work in a machine shop, too. I dunno; I’m kind of good at both.”

“ _Kind of_ ?” Lance remarked, “dude, there’s no one I trust more with my food _or_ my machinery. Not even myself.”

Hunk grinned. “Awww, thanks, Lance.”

“And we all know that you’re gonna move to the coast once you get the money,” Pidge finished.

“Yeah,” Lance sighed, flopping onto his back on the floor and staring at the ceiling. “I’m almost there, too. I was looking at rent prices in cities along the coast, and I’ve already got enough. Just a bit more to pay for the move and living expenses until I get a new job, and man, I’m out of here.”

“Hey, maybe I’ll go with you,” Hunk suggested, nudging him with a foot. “I was thinking maybe a seafood restaurant. Living by water might make that easier.”

Lance smiled. “That’d be great, big guy! I could help you get started, bring in some customers with my dazzling smile… it’d be awesome.”

Hunk laughed, but then silence fell over the three of them. Finally, he said what they’d all been thinking. “Where does Keith fit into all of this?”

Lance closed his eyes, trying to think of an answer. “I don’t know. I guess it’s just one more mystery to add to the stack just for Keith. But I’d at least want him to meet you guys. I really think we’d be a good team, the four of us.”

“Does that mean you’re giving me veto rights?” Pidge asked with a glint in her eye.

“Pidge, you’d have veto rights whether I gave them to you or not. Since you’d make his life a living hell if you didn’t like him, you gremlin.”

She smirked. “Only if he did something bad.”

“Uh-huh.”

~~~~~

Lance had spent a long time thinking of what his last five questions would be. They had to be perfectly executed in order to work. He couldn’t let _anything_ throw him off.

“Lance! I’m happy you’re here!”

...shit.

Keith _looked_ happy as he came running up to the truck, his eyes practically sparkling. But he looked nervous, his hands seeming to have a hard time deciding where to hang.

“The thing is, I wanted to try some _real_ cooking, so I tried making some shrimp alfredo, but I made _way_ too much pasta…” he was talking extremely fast, his eyes flicking constantly from Lance’s face to the ground.

Lance was already smiling so wide he worried his face might split. “Keith, if you wanted to have dinner with me, all you had to do was ask,” he joked.

Keith seemed to consider this, then took a deep breath, letting the air go through his whole body before letting out the tension with one big exhale. When he looked back up at Lance, he looked 100% serious.

“Lance, will you have dinner with me?”

Oh no. Oh God in heaven, he was so cute. Lance was pretty sure he felt a stabbing sensation in his heart, but figured it was best to leave Cupid’s arrow right where it was.

“Yeah, sure,” he answered, his mouth hidden behind his hand and his voice coming out two octaves higher than it was supposed to. And the smile that spread across Keith’s face when he said yes was _not_ helping him keep his cool. It was so good. So pure.

Even better was that the whole “I made too much food” story was so _obviously_ a lie, because Keith had a whole picnic set up in front of the shack, complete with a flannel blanket laid out neatly on the dirt, held down by a rock on each corner.

Before Lance sat down to eat, though, he went to grab Keith’s box from the back of the truck, tucking it under his arm as he headed over.

He plopped down across from Keith on the blanket, the food spread out between them.

“Oh, that’s for today,” Keith said, dropping noodles onto his plate. “You can open it if you want.”

Lance pulled his box-cutter from his khaki pocket and slit the tape, grinning at Keith’s bemused expression. “ _Some_ people carry knives on them as part of their occupation, not as a threat.”

Keith rolled his eyes, but he was still smiling, just a bit. Lance opened the box, pulling out a bottle of… guava juice?

“I figured if I got anything alcoholic, you’d accuse me of trying to get you drunk,” Keith explained before Lance could say anything.

“Damn. Read my mind.”

Keith laughed. “Shut up and eat.”

And that he did, scooping up a sizable pile of fettuccine noodles, alfredo sauce, and a nice big serving of shrimp, spiraling it elegantly around his fork. He could see Keith biting his bottom lip nervously as he took his first bite, watching for his reaction.

He winced a bit. It was _salty_. “Pretty good for a guy who only cooks mac n’ cheese.”

Keith glared at him. “You swore on your _bisabuela_ ’s grave that you wouldn’t lie to me.”

Damn. Caught red-handed.

“Okay, to be completely honest, it tastes like you dumped the ocean in here.”

“Shit.” Surprisingly enough, that was actually the first time he’d heard Keith curse. “You don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to.”

But Lance was already shoving forkfuls of it into his mouth, stuffing his cheeks with it. “No. I’m gonna eat all of it and you can’t stop me.”

And then Keith was laughing, and it felt perfect. The guava juice washed it all down nicely, and Lance had already completely forgotten every single detail of his plan.

“Oh yeah, Twenty Questions! I almost forgot!” Keith announced, setting his plate down with a clang. “How many do we have left?”

“Five.”

“Right. So… who do you trust more than anyone? I mean, if you were in trouble, who do you _know_ would come help you?”

“Oh, Hunk, definitely. Hey, if you ever decide to leave this desert, you should have him teach you how to cook. He’s really great at it, and you could use some pointers.”

Keith made a face at him, and Lance just laughed and took another swig of guava juice.

“Okay, so… my turn…” He could _swear_ he had a plan before he came out here. But what was it? Nope. It was gone. He’d just have to wing it. “Why’d you do all of this, suddenly? Special occasion?”

“Um, well… it’s… been exactly one year… since you first came to my door.”

“Yeah, and at first I thought you were an old guy. I was _hoping_ you were an old guy. Man, am I happy that turned out to be totally wrong. Even though you seriously need a haircut. You’ve got a mullet.”

“It is _not_ a mullet.”

“Is, too! Look, if it’s got bangs in the front, but it’s long in the back…” he reached out to run Keith’s hair through his fingers as he talked, to make his point, then lost his train of thought when he discovered that it was much softer than he thought it would be.

He quickly let go, looking away. But then a thought crossed his mind, and he suddenly jumped to his feet. “Oh yeah! This is the perfect time!” He quickly ran to the truck, fetching his guitar case from the floor of the passenger seat. He’d made sure it was tuned perfectly like fifty times before he’d decided to bring it with him. He gently carried it back, setting it on the edge of the blanket and opening it to reveal his very own guitar. It was a little worn at the edges, and its wax coating was scratched in places, but it was _his_ , and he loved it.

“Keith, meet Lucía,” he said with a grin, holding it up for Keith to see, before suddenly becoming flustered, blushing and rushing to explain, “you said you’d like to hear it. So I thought, maybe…”

“No, I meant it. I’m listening.”

Lance took a deep breath and ran a hand over the strings, delighting in its warm honey-gold sound. He pulled out a pick and started strumming, letting the music wash over him. It was weird-- he hadn’t played Lucía in so long… but here he was, sitting on a picnic blanket with Keith, letting Lucía guide him.

“Anyway, here’s Wonderwall,” he joked, even though the chords he was playing were definitely _not_ Wonderwall. Actually, it was an old Spanish lullaby his _abuela_ would sing to him whenever she was babysitting Lance and his siblings. It was always his favorite, to the point where she’d use it as a reward or punishment-- if he was bad, she wouldn’t sing the lullaby for him that night. When he told Keith that, he laughed.

And Lance found himself singing, too, even though he knew Keith wouldn’t understand the words. It was soft, something to put children to sleep, but somehow it managed to fill all of the space around them, loose music notes floating out into the desert.

And Keith just… listened, leaning back on his hands, a slight smile playing at his lips, the food on his plate completely forgotten. When the song was done, he clapped, sighing happily. “I was kind of hoping you’d be a terrible singer, so I could take down a bit of your ego, but I guess that’s not gonna work.”

Lance stuck his tongue out at him. “Try again next time, Samurai.”

“Samurai?”

“It’s your new nickname. Because of all the knives.”

Keith snorted. “You’re really stuck on that, aren’t you? Look, I’m sorry I overreacted that _one_ time.”

“I thought you were actually gonna kill me.”

“I wouldn’t have killed you.”

“You sure?”

“I wouldn’t _want_ to kill you. You’re loud, persistent, have a big head, ask too many questions, and don’t know when to leave well enough alone, but… I don’t hate you. Not enough to want to hurt you.”

“Is that why you keep so many secrets? Because you don’t want to hurt me?”

“Lance…” Keith warned.

“It’s not my turn for Twenty Questions. And you don’t have to answer.”

“I... “ Keith paused, swallowing. “You wanna know a secret?”

“You already know the answer’s yes.”

“I don’t… actually need packages every week. I did for a while after moving here, but once I got myself adjusted, I didn’t, really. I just kept doing it because…” he trailed off, his face reddening.

“Because?”

“I wanted… to see… you.”

Did Cupid ever shoot multiple arrows at the same person just to make _extra_ sure they’re in love? Because Lance was pretty sure that’s what was happening, here.

Lance set his guitar aside, scooting just a _bit_ closer to Keith. “I would come see you even if it weren’t my job, you know.”

“It was hard to admit that, you moron.”

“Well then, good job. I’m proud of you.”

“You sound like you’re mocking me.”

“I am not! I always _mean it_ when I say I’m proud of someone. Not like my _abuelo_. You should have met that old man, seriously…” he launched into a story about his grandfather, who would promise money in exchange for good grades, but never gave Lance anything except a sarcastic “I’m proud of you” if Lance ever got above a C.

And Keith, for the first time, laughed and responded with his own story, about his brother. “Shiro always tried to keep everything on his shoulders, so it felt like you could trust him with anything. But then he’d just turn on me when I needed him to back me up. ‘No, I’ve never seen that knife before’. Biggest betrayal of my life.”

And they stayed like that for a long while… talking, laughing, exchanging stories, whatever came to mind. Occasionally, Lance would pick up his guitar again, playing every song he knew how to. And the whole while, they were ever-so-slowly inching closer together, until they were sitting side by side on the blanket, so close that their shoulders met. It was long past dark before Lance even realized how long he’d been there.

“Oh shit,” he whispered, sitting up straight and looking around. “Have I really been here for like six hours?”

“Do you have to leave?”

Lance looked off toward the ghost town, shuddering. “No, I think I’m just gonna stay here for the night. Didn’t I tell you? There’s no way in hell I’m driving through that place at night. I like my life, thanks.”

“You sure? You won’t get in trouble?” Keith asked, although he seemed a bit pleased under the surface.

“Nah. You’re my last delivery anyway, since you’re so far out, and they don’t need my truck until noon tomorrow anyway, so I’m not in a hurry.” He glanced up at the shack. “You can go inside, though. I’ll sit out here for a while.”

Keith nodded, getting to his feet, grabbing much of the dinner dishes and heading back inside, the door swinging shut behind him.

And Lance felt his absence immediately, mainly in the form of a wave of cold hitting his right side, where Keith’s body heat had been keeping him warm enough to resist the desert’s cold night air.

He heard the door swing open again, and turned to see Keith returning, holding a big mound of blankets. He plopped down next to Lance, even closer than he had been before.

“You don’t have to wait out here with me, you know. I can sleep in my truck,” Lance insisted.

“I don’t want you to get scared out here, all by yourself.”

“...thanks,” Lance replied, only half sarcastically. He flopped backwards so that he was on his back, staring upwards at the sky, dotted with billions of stars. “Hey, you wanna finish that game of Twenty Questions?” he asked, still looking at the stars. “I know I said only one turn per week, but… I can’t sleep, and there’s only four left.”

“Okay. The rest of the rules are still in place, though,” Keith warned.

“No problem.”

“Okay, question number seventeen… do you believe in aliens?”

“Yeah, I guess. I mean, I’ve never seen one, obviously, but Pidge always says that there are so many planets out there, there’s _gotta_ be life somewhere. Well, she always says it in bigger, sciency-sounding words, but that’s what I get out of it.’

Keith snorted. “Okay, your turn.”

“Would you hate me if I said that I thought I might be falling in love with you?”

Keith jolted as if he’d been zapped. “I-um, I don’t…”

“Well?” Lance asked, sitting up.

It was dark, but Keith was definitely blushing. “No. I wouldn’t hate that.”

“Okay, your turn. Question number eighteen.”

Keith’s jaw set, and he turned to look Lance in the eye. “Would you hate me if I said I tried not to fall in love with you, but did anyway?”

“No. Actually, that sounds like a dream come true.”

Lance leaned closer, enjoying the feeling of Keith’s body heat against him again. “My turn.”

“Go ahead.”

“...can I kiss you?”

And maybe it shouldn’t have counted as a question, because Keith didn’t exactly answer. He just leaned forward, one hand cupping Lance’s cheek, moving so closely that his eyelashes tickled Lance’s skin. And then, yes, they were kissing. And it was everything Lance had craved-- gasps for breath, satisfied sighs just long enough to tickle skin before going in for another kiss, body heat mixing together as a wall against the night’s chill, left hands weaving together while right hands found their way into tangles of hair, as all the while their lips pressed gently, then fiercely, as if words had failed, but they were still trying to speak.

When finally they pulled apart, Keith dropped his head against Lance’s shoulder, his face buried in the crook of Lance’s neck, his breath ruffling the collar of his shirt. He exhaled a laugh. “God, it’s like a bad porno.”

“Well, I, for one, would be happy to be in a porno with you.”

He felt a fist collide with his abdomen, just hard enough to make his stomach lurch.

“Ow. I’m just kidding, dude. I mean, I _would_ , if you wanted to, but there’s no way you would.” He looked down at Keith’s mop of black hair, smiling to himself. He wrapped his arms around Keith’s back, feeling so happy he wondered if he was dreaming.

“It’s my turn, right?”

To be honest, Lance had forgotten that they were still playing the game. “Yeah, shoot.”

“Have you ever believed something so much that you’d chase after it, even though everyone you knew told you that you were crazy?”

“Not… really? I don’t think so… Well, I thought Pidge and Hunk didn’t believe that you were real until I showed them that picture of you, but it turned out they were just messing with me. Oh, wait! There was once, I guess, when I was seven. I was convinced that the house at the end of our street was haunted, and my family told me I was making stuff up. Finally I tried to go in there to prove it. When my mom found out, she gave me a beating. But I’m still pretty sure that place is haunted.”

“...okay. Your turn.”

“Would you leave this place-- this shack in the middle of the desert, if I asked you to? You could meet Pidge and Hunk, hang out with us on game or movie nights…”

Keith pulled away, looking guarded again. “I… I can’t. Not yet.”

“Not yet? Why? _What_ is keeping you out here?”

“It’s not your turn.”

“Fine,” Lance grumbled, crossing his arms.

“Would you do _anything_ for your family? Your brothers and sisters?”

“Probably, yeah. I mean, I’m the big brother-- I have to. Even if my parents put way more effort into getting my sister into college because at least _she_ got good grades. I was a lost cause. But… yeah, I’d do anything for them.”

“...okay.”

“My turn? It’s the last question.”

“I’m ready.”

“What _are_ you doing out here in the desert, Keith?”

“You promised you wouldn’t ask me that. You swore on your _bisabuela’s_ grave.”

“So she can come back and haunt me if she wants,” Lance replied, not looking away from Keith’s face. “You don’t have to answer, but I’m not changing my question.”

Keith’s hand was still intertwined with Lance’s, and his grip tightened for a moment. “I’m… looking for something.”

Lance was shocked-- Keith had actually given him an answer. To be honest, he hadn’t expected that he would.

“Looking for what?”

“...my brother.”


	5. Searching

“Um, I don’t mean to be insensitive, but… I thought your brother was _dead_.”

Keith pushed open the shack’s door, looking back at Lance. “After Shiro lost his arm, he got discharged and came back home. He wanted to leave that part of his past behind him, so he decided to work in real estate.”

Lance raised an eyebrow. “Your brother’s a _realtor_?”

“Yeah. Why? Something wrong with that?”

“No no, it’s just hard to picture, that’s all.”

Keith leaned against the doorway, his eyes a bit glazed over as he continued explaining. “This whole area… used to have oil. The town built up around it. Then there was an accident. A big fire started. No one got hurt, but the oil rig was wrecked. The company figured it was more expensive to try to fix everything than to just drill somewhere else. With it went all of the jobs, so people just... moved away. Recently, a new company was looking into buying the whole area. Shiro… my brother came out to do the evaluation.”

“O...kay?” Lance said, urging Keith to go on. The door to the shack of mysteries was open, but without a light on, he still couldn’t see inside.

“And then he disappeared.”

Lance blinked. “That’s… it?”

“That’s the official story. After two months, they declared him dead and gave me the inheritance, since our parents have been dead for a while. But I’m not convinced.”

“Why’s that?”

Keith sighed, straightening up and walking into the shack, beckoning for Lance to follow. He flicked on an overhead light, and Lance looked around, trying to take all of it in at once.

On one hand, it was pretty well organized, without the food containers and rumpled clothes that he had been expecting. On the other hand, the _way_ it was organized was… shocking.

The walls were plastered with diagrams, maps, news stories. There were pins and pieces of string all over, connecting all of it into one giant network, so much that it made his head spin.

“The government kept telling me that a foreign agency probably got back at him for his time in Special Operations, and took him out. But I think… no, I _know_ that he was taken.”

Lance tore his gaze away from the walls to look at Keith. “What? Taken? You mean like, kidnapped?”

“More like… abducted.”

It took a second for Lance to understand. “Wait, wait, wait… you think your brother was snatched up by _aliens_?!”

Keith’s face fell. “I knew it. You don’t believe me.”

“No no no no, I just… it’s a lot to take in, okay? It’s not like you encounter an alien abduction story every day.” He paused, looking back at the walls. “So, uh… what makes you think it was aliens?”

“I have a video,” Keith said, pointing to the computer.

“What? Seriously?!” Lance exclaimed, hurrying to join Keith over at the computer. It wasn’t a super old model, but it wasn’t that new, either, starting up with a loud wheezing sound.

“I was Skyping my brother when it happened,” Keith explained as he logged into the computer, opened up his documents, and clicked on a video file. “I literally saw the whole thing. But, then, since I didn’t have a copy of the video, because they’re broadcasts, not recordings… no one believed me.”

“Wait, if you don’t have a copy, what are you about to show me?”

“Well… I found out that the government had Skype send it the data for the video file, so they could look into it more. Had it saved on a flash drive. And when I was in the office for questioning, I kind of… took it.”

Lance gasped. “You _stole_ from the _government_?!”

“You can’t tell a n y o n e. Why do you think I didn’t want anyone to come inside?”

“Got it. My lips are sealed. Except for you.”

“Good. So… here goes.” He pressed play, and Lance huddled close to get the best view of the screen.

The person Lance assumed to be Keith’s older brother took up most of the screen. He was pretty handsome, with spiky black hair falling over his forehead, a strong chin, sharp cheekbones, striking eyes, and a reassuring smile. It was kind of hard to believe he used to be in SpecOps. He looked so… trustworthy.

“Well, it’s not too bad out here. At least there’s electricity.” He paused, as if waiting for a response, then laughed. “Well, it’s only for a few days. You might even like it out here, Keith. It’s quiet.”

There was another silence, and Lance realized that the gaps were probably from when Keith was responding. Skype went two ways, but the video they were watching only had Shiro’s side.

“This is when it happens,” Keith said, pointing at the side of the screen, where one of the shack’s windows was visible through the camera.

Suddenly, a loud noise came from behind Shiro, and he jumped, one hand going to his side as if on instinct, before he realized that he didn’t have a weapon there. Now that he was standing, Lance could clearly see Shiro’s prosthetic right arm-- a pretty advanced model that Pidge probably would have been fascinated with.

The sound was a roar, seeming to come from both behind Shiro and all around him, and they were probably hearing only half of it, considering the way the computer speakers shivered from the sound. In the video, the whole shack was quaking, the bed frame clattering against the floor, tipping over Shiro’s suitcase.

And then a bright light, seeming to come from everywhere, every window, every crack in the shack’s wooden walls, and through the space in the door. A purplish light, hard to look at.

“What the _hell?!_ ” Shiro was saying. He went to his briefcase, pulling out a sizable, hooked knife. Definitely Keith’s brother.

He ran to the door, swinging it open, ducking behind it for cover and peeking through the doorway. He definitely moved like a soldier, every action calculated and precise, with purpose.

There was a glowing shape in the sky-- Lance had to admit that. And yeah, it looked a lot like a spaceship. But… seriously?

As soon as Shiro stepped through the doorway, he was yanked sideways, as if something had grabbed him, but Lance didn’t see anything. There was nothing but the light, the shape in the night sky.

Lance watched the window that Keith had pointed to earlier, wondering what he was supposed to be watching for. Then… there it was: Shiro’s silhouette, identifiable by the prosthetic arm, suspended in a beam of light, looking like he was struggling as hard as he could against it, but not succeeding. The light trailed from the same shape in the sky as earlier, until it moved off, leaving the shack dark, quiet, and empty.

The video ended, and Lance let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “That… really happened? You’re not just trying to trick me?”

“Lance, I’m serious. I want to trust you.”

Those were heavy words, considering all that had happened that night. Keith’s trust felt like a heavy burden. But it was one he had desperately wanted for a whole year now.

Lance took a deep breath, closing his eyes and trying to gather all of the thoughts spinning wildly through his head. “So this is why you’re out here? You don’t believe the government’s story, so you came out here to look for him yourself?”

Keith nodded. “That’s about it, yeah.”

“...okay.”

“Okay? That’s all you say?”

“I’m with you, okay? This is why you asked me those questions, right? Believing in aliens, chasing after something even though everyone else told you that you were crazy, whether I’d do anything for my siblings… you’re afraid I’m gonna freak out and report you, send you to the loony bin.”

“Yeah, that’s about right.”

“Well, I’m pretty freaked out,” Lance admitted, but then he reached out and wrapped his hands around Keith’s. “But I’m not gonna report you. I’m staying right here.” He leaned forward, kissing Keith on the cheek, and then the tip of his nose, and then his lips, just for a brief second.

“Thanks, Lance,” Keith said, with a tiny smile.

“Well, I take that back. I can’t _stay_ stay right here, since I have to work, and my friends will worry about me if I don’t come back, but I promise, I’ll help you look for your brother every chance I get. I swear on my _bisabuela’s_ grave.”

“Way to ruin the moment.”

“I try.”

~~~~~

The thing with telling your friends _everything_ about your blooming relationship with the strange boy in the desert is that suddenly having something HUGE that you’re _not_ allowed to tell them kind of eats at you.

Fortunately, Pidge and Hunk stopped paying attention after being told that he and Keith had made out (because this _was_ Lance they were talking about, and they figured if there was anything after that, they didn’t want to know), although they’d reminded him that he still hadn’t learned the important things about Keith, and _boy_ was that wrong.

But that was the part he couldn’t say.

Lance had watched a lot of alien movies, abductions and otherwise. He’d listened to campfire alien stories, even read some books about them. But he wasn’t sure how much help any of that would be to him right now.

Getting Shiro back was a two part process: first, they had to find him. That wasn’t exactly an easy task, since alien abductions didn’t leave much evidence, not to mention that he could have been taken into space already. Second, they had to actually _get him back_ , and Lance especially didn’t like that idea. If a well-built, over six feet tall former SpecOps officer could be taken almost effortlessly, what was _he_ supposed to do? He was just a delivery guy.

Since he hadn’t slept _at all_ the previous night, Lance spent almost all of his Saturday asleep, after heading back to the city and returning his truck, not waking up until well into the afternoon.

As soon as he was awake, he had the urge to text Keith, but had to resist, since the lack of cell reception out in the desert meant that Keith wouldn’t get it anyway. But the “good morning” texts were an important part of being a good boyfriend, damn it!

They’d exchanged phone numbers before he’d left, Keith having to explain to him that his was actually a solar-powered satellite phone, so he could take calls, but not texts.

Actually, the worst part was going to be keeping up with proper romance while also assuring Keith that he was taking the whole aliens thing seriously. Which he was. Or, at least, he was trying to. He still wasn’t sure the whole thing had sunk in completely yet.

His phone rang, jolting him out of his thoughts. He picked up immediately, turning on his charm despite being only half-awake. “Hello~ I was hoping you would call, Samurai.”

There was a silence on the other end. “Did you mistake me for your girlfriend again, _mijo_?” an annoyed voice said.

“ _Mom_?!”

“Why are you so surprised? Am I not allowed to call my own son?”

“No, no, it’s okay. I just… yeah, I was expecting my boyfriend.” Could he call Keith his boyfriend? Was that where they were right now? Well, he’d have to run with it for now.

Another silence on the other end. “ _Another_ one?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“You should stop flirting around so much. You break too many hearts. Do you think you can stick to one for a while?”

“Like glue, Mamá. Actually, more like tape. I think it’ll hurt a _lot_ if I have to let him go.”

“...good. Well, ask your boyfriend if he wants to have dinner with us tomorrow. That’s what I called to ask about. Your father got a raise and we want to celebrate.”

Lance ran a hand through his hair, sighing. “I can’t, Mom. I work tomorrow. And Keith’s… busy.”

“On a Sunday? But when do you go to church?”

“Uh…”

“Lance, you--”

She went into a tirade about responsibility, respecting God and his family before all else, not allowing Lance to get a word in before she finally finished with a calm and pleasant, “well, we’d love to meet your new boyfriend. Tell him to come over whenever he’d like.”

“Sure, Mom.”

~~~~~

Friday arrived, and Lance felt kind of out of place driving out into the desert shack in distressed jeans and a tank top rather than his khakis and polo for work. Also it felt a bit out of place to be driving his beat up Grand Am through the ghost town’s main street. But he didn’t want Keith wasting money just to see him, although he did definitely like the idea of that. Instead, he’d promised Keith that he would head out there every Friday as usual, but from then on it would be _after_ work.

He parked his car in front of the shack and went to knock on the door, calling out, “Special delivery! One boyfriend for Keith Kogane!”

The door swung open to reveal Keith, who was trying to make a sour expression, but actually fighting a smile. “You’re really happy about this, aren’t you?”

“You have _no_ idea,” Lance said, leaning in to kiss him on the cheek. “Not about the abduction part, but I am happy to have you.”

“Well, congratulations.”

“So, what are we doing today?”

“You’re not gonna like it,” Keith said with a smirk.

“Oh, is that a challenge?”

Keith stepped through the doorway, pulling the door shut behind himself and clicking the lock. He looked vibrant-- not only his clothing, with the addition of a bright red jacket over his usual black t-shirt and jeans, but also in the expression on his face, an intensity, an excitement, that Lance wasn’t sure he’d seen in him before. And it was contagious. Lance found himself incredibly eager to follow after Keith as they rounded the back of the shack.

On the other side of the shack, a piece of roof extended out on a pair of posts, creating a rectangle of shade in which a brown tarp covered a mound about chest-high at its tallest.

Keith pulled a piece of string hanging from a knot at the bottom of the tarp, and then whisked the whole thing off, revealing the mound to be a bright red motorcycle that still shone as if new.

Lance made an inhuman sound and then ran to the bike to look at it closer, the sleek red paint and black machinery… none of which he understood, mind you, but man, did it look _cool_. It was actually about halfway between a motorcycle and a dirt bike, with heavy tires designed to grip at whatever they were presented with-- a bit better designed for off-road driving than most standard motorcycles were.

“Woah! How did you afford _this_ thing?!” he squeaked, running his hands over the handlebars.

“I didn’t. Actually, Shiro got this for me as a graduation present, saying he was proud of me for making it through high school instead of dropping out. Since I was gonna get one anyway, he wanted to make sure I at least got a good one.”

“Dude, brother of the _year_.”

“He’s been gone for over a year now.”

“You know what I meant!”

Keith swung his leg over the seat, pulled a key out of his pocket and slid it into the ignition, pushing the bike to come roaring to life. He slid a pair of safety sunglasses over his eyes, then shouted, “get on!”

Lance didn’t need to be asked twice. He slid onto the bike just behind Keith, putting on the pair of glasses he was offered, and then wrapped his arms around Keith’s abdomen, pressing close to his back.

“I guess I don’t need to tell you to hold on tight,” Keith remarked.

“Nope!”

Keith shook his head, and then urged the bike forward, shooting off down the broken road, back toward the ghost town.

The wind roared around them mercilessly, like a million fingers grabbing at Lance’s hair, his clothes, blowing all of it behind him as if trying to rip it off. He pressed closer to Keith, his heart pounding, exhilarated.

They came skidding to a halt in front of the skeletal remains of the ghost town’s gas station, and Keith set down the kickstand and killed the engine.

Lance looked around. “Oh no. Oh no no no no. I am not wandering through this creepy place all day. It’s hard enough to just drive straight through in my car.”

Keith shrugged, taking off his safety glasses. “Okay then, stay here.”

“I’m coming, I’m coming, geez!”

He scrambled off of the back of the motorcycle, hurrying after Keith, making sure to stick close. “So… what are we looking for?”

“Well, even when this town was active, there were some reports of strange lights in the sky to the north, but they were always dismissed as ghost stories.”

“Ohhhh, so _those_ are the newspaper articles taped to your massive conspiracy theory wall.”

“I don’t think I like you calling it a ‘conspiracy theory wall’, but… yes.” He pointed at a few places in the town in turn. “There, there, there, and there, are all of the places I traced to be where the lights have been sighted through time. Then I put solar-powered cameras in as many places as I could.” The hotel, a disintegrating bar, and a couple of the pueblo houses.

“I don’t know how to link them to my computer, so I come out here to check them every day.”

A slight breeze blew through, causing the windows to moan, and Lance screamed and jumped toward Keith, before realizing what it was.

He expected Keith to shove him off, but he didn’t, just headed off toward the houses, Lance still attached to his arm. Oh, that’s right… they were dating. Of course, Lance’s first dates usually entailed walks in the park or along a beach, or dinner and a movie, not alien hunting in a creepy ghost town.

They went inside one of the mud-brick houses, which Lance was surprised to see actually looked like it once held modern-day Americans, rather than indigenous peoples. An old electric fixture hung from the ceiling, and two of the walls were lined with light blue wallpaper.

He wrinkled his nose at that. “Really? Blue is my favorite color, but it _so_ does not belong in a clay-brick house. Talk about color clashing.”

Keith laughed, walking over to the window where, sure enough, a small camera was set up. He opened it up, hitting the fast-forward button and playing through the video, his eyes flicking rapidly as he focused intently on it. Lance watched him for a while, enjoying the way Keith looked so entirely enraptured by what he was doing, then reminded himself that this was serious business.

He leaned out the window, looking out at the town. He tried to imagine it in the past, bustling with activity, people talking to each other at the gas station, stopping at the bar after work, then coming home to their clay houses with blue-wallpapered walls. If he tried, he could almost picture it. But every time he blinked, it would always go back to the way it was now: ruined and empty buildings, so unsheltered from the sun that almost all of the color had been bleached from it. It looked like a scaled-up graveyard.

“You _sure_ that no one died here?” he asked Keith, resting his elbow on the windowsill and leaning his head onto his hand.

“That’s what Shiro said. _I_ thought it looked creepy, too, when he first showed me pictures of the place. But I’ve… kind of gotten used to it. The whole time I’ve been here, nothing’s happened. So you really don’t have to worry.”

Lance tried to take those words to heart, and not to think about horrible, gruesome deaths. He stared up at the sky, this time trying to imagine a spaceship up there among the clouds.

“Why do you think the aliens always stay in this spot? I mean, I never hear that many alien stories in my city, and you said that people saw the lights when they were here, so they probably keep coming back here, right? Why here, of all places?”

Keith blinked, setting the camera down. “I don’t know. There are no abduction stories, except for Shiro, but… I guess they’re looking for something?”

“Hmmmm…”

They moved on to the next camera, and then the next, and the same routine played out, with Keith scanning through the camera’s video recordings while Lance explored a bit, although never so far that Keith left his sight.

And little by little, Keith explained a bit more about his search over the past year. In addition to the cameras (which had only captured evidence of the lights once), Keith had found some places in the area where something felt… _off_ , where something _appeared_ artificial about rock formations or the way the desert plants grew, but he couldn’t find any evidence of human interference. Apparently searching for things like that was what Keith had spent the majority of his time in the desert doing.

Their last stop was the old hotel, with its second floor almost completely disintegrated, the first floor half-covered in sand. He’d expected it to smell rotted and mildewy, but it didn’t. Which made sense, in the desert, he supposed. Instead of rotting away from water, the buildings just slowly dissolved, worn away by dust and sand.

Lance’s eyes widened when he saw an old jukebox sitting in the corner, looking almost entirely intact, probably because it was in a relatively safe spot, tucked away next to the hotel’s bar/front desk. “No way! You think it still works?!”

“Um, no… there hasn’t been anyone out here for twenty years at least.”

Lance pressed the “on” button in the back and it came to life, lighting up dimly. He wriggled his eyebrows at Keith, grinning.

Keith looked stunned, staring at him, the camera still in his hand. “How did you--?! There’s no power!”

Lance laughed. “Hey, if there’s power in your shack, it probably runs through here. Believe me, I have no idea how to actually fix this thing.” He paused, considering the music selection while Keith returned to the camera. “What do you think? Twenty-one plays of ‘What’s New Pussycat’ with one ‘It’s Not Unusual’ right in the middle?”

“Lance…” Keith warned.

“Right. No fun since there’s no one else here.” He hit a button and the opening guitar strums of “Hotel California” started ringing through the old hotel’s ruined lobby. Lance started swaying along, dancing around the room as he looked at its contents.

“Seriously?” Keith scoffed.

“Get it? ‘Cuz we’re in a hotel. I thought it was funny.”

Keith rolled his eyes, but was fighting a smile as he went back to the camera. Lance climbed over the front desk as the music continued to play, acting out the song, his eyes on Keith’s reaction the whole time. He could tell Keith was watching him out of the corner of his eye, from the way a smile would ghost across his lips whenever Lance would do something especially ridiculous, like splay himself across the countertop.

The song ended, and Lance climbed back over the bar, digging in his jeans pockets for a quarter. He found one, dusted off the pocket lint, then stuck it in the machine, pressing for the next song.

The sound of piano trills replaced the silence, followed by harmonica, and Lance started dancing again, as if he were waltzing by himself.

He danced over to Keith, a mischievous smile on his face as Billy Joel started singing through the jukebox.

“Dance with me?”

“You’re not taking this seriously at all, are you?” Keith asked, but allowed Lance to take his hand and pull him away from the camera.

“I want you to find your brother, honestly.. But I don’t really know how to help you, Keith,” he said as they swept in circles around the old, dusty hotel, the sunlight fading over the horizon. “All I can do is try to make sure you’re not miserable while you look. Take a break sometimes. You’re _going_ to find him.”

Keith was quiet for a while, still letting Lance pull him along to the music, dancing close together.

“...thanks, Lance.”

They stayed like that for a while, long after the music had ended and the sunlight had faded into dusk, just dancing slowly through a dusty hotel lobby in a town that looked haunted. And yet Lance was pretty sure it was the most romantic thing he’d ever done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't ruminate too much on the technological stuff in this chapter-- I'm not an expert in how things work, lol. I took my description of the motorcycle from my sister, who actually owns and rides one. Based on her descriptions, please please please actually wear proper riding gear and a helmet, unlike Keith and Lance in here. I just figured they wouldn't bother because of their personalities. I'm pretty sure Hunk would tell him to put a helmet on if he were to find out, lol
> 
> Oh and btw the song they dance to at the end of the chapter is "Piano Man" by Billy Joel. Not exactly a romantic slow-dance song, but there aren't usually a whole lot of those in jukeboxes.


	6. Some Help

The weeks passed by as if carried on the wind. Breeze through Sunday, Monday, then game/movie night on Tuesday nights, and then careen through Wednesday, Thursday… until Friday would finally come and he could return to the desert.

They would spend the day searching, marking down the location of another weird spot on Keith’s conspiracy theory wall. Which, yes, he continued to call the conspiracy theory wall. They would go out into the ghost town and look at the cameras, which never caught anything, but it was fun, in a weird way. The town stopped seeming so creepy to Lance. Well, by no means did he ever want to stay there alone, but while he was with Keith, it was okay.

And then they would go back to the shack and sit together, going over the day’s events, and Lance would do everything he could to make Keith laugh, until they would end up in a tangle on the floor, kissing and laughing and temporarily letting themselves forget about the gravity of their search.

Lance had pretty much permanently stopped bothering to go home on Friday nights, preferring to stay with Keith well into Saturday before forcing himself to get into his car and drive back into the city for work on Sunday, only to come back the next week and do it all over again, sleeping on Keith’s ridiculously uncomfortable mattress, or under mounds of blankets with the night sky as their ceiling, not caring if he woke up with a strained neck or a sore back because it allowed him to spend the whole night holding Keith in his arms, and that was everything.

He’d tried to be careful about touching Keith at first, worried that too much intimacy would cause him to shrink away, since he seemed so reserved, but that turned out to not be a problem. Instead, Keith seemed touch-starved, always being in contact with Lance in one way or another as long as they were together, even if it was just pinkies hooked together, or sitting calmly on Lance’s lap while he studied old news stories, looking for clues. And that all suited Lance just fine because holy hell was he gone for that boy.

The only problem was that they still hadn’t found any more clues about Shiro.

It wasn’t like they weren’t trying, or that they were too distracted to look, it was just… they had all of this information, but no idea what to do with it. So far all they’d been able to figure out was that yes, the alien sightings and remnants seemed to only be in a ten-mile radius around the town, and that sightings, although usually publicly dismissed, seemed to occur at least once per year around the town, at least until it had been abandoned.

But that really led to more questions than answers. If they came back to this spot every year, what were they looking for? If no one had ever been abducted or even reported missing, then why had they taken Shiro?

Lance had a feeling that it probably didn’t help that neither he nor Keith were very tech-savvy, and most likely had neither the proper tools nor know-how to figure out what they were missing. He did, however, know who did. There was _one_ problem, though.

“Um, hey, Keith?” Lance began to ask, already nervous. He’d tried to ask the question dozens of times before, but always stopped himself, knowing that it could make Keith upset. He couldn’t keep doing that, though. If he _genuinely_ wanted Keith to find his brother, he couldn’t keep holding back just to avoid creating stress. “Do you think… I could ask my friends to help us look for Shiro?”

Keith’s pen went flying out of his hands. “No! I mean, I trust you, but I don’t know them. I could get in a lot of trouble if what I’m doing gets out. You know that.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he said, turning so that he was looking Keith in the eyes. “But we’re trying to find a needle in a haystack, here. And I’m just saying it would be a hell of a lot easier if we had a magnet.”

Keith frowned. “A magnet?”

Dang. Lance was pretty proud of himself for thinking of that metaphor, but Keith didn’t get it. Oh well. “What I mean is, my friends, Hunk and Pidge, are total tech nerds. They can figure out sciency stuff way better than I can. They can help. I know they can.”

“How can I trust them? It took me a year to trust _you_.”

Lance sighed. “Yeah, a year of determination and hard work.” He reached out, grabbing Keith’s hands and playing with his fingers while he talked. “You remember when we were playing Twenty Questions, and you asked me who I trusted more than anyone in the world? Who I _knew_ would come help me if I was ever in trouble?”

“Yeah. You said it was your friend Hunk.”

“Exactly! I would trust Hunk with my first-born child. Do you know what that means? I trust him more than my own family members, even my parents. He’s overcautious and can’t take roller coaster rides _at all_ without throwing up, but he looks out for his friends. And I trust Pidge _almost_ as much.”

“Almost?”

“She can be a little gremlin sometimes, but most of the time I deserve it. But that’s only for little things. Anything major happens? She’s got your back.”

“And you want me to take your word for it?”

“You don’t have to let them in all the way. Just… let me bring them out here. Try to judge them for yourself. I’ll see if I can ask them to help without saying exactly what’s going on. Okay?”

Keith took a deep breath, closing his eyes. “...Okay.”

Lance grinned. “Great! Leave it to me!”

~~~~~

“No way in _hell_ ,” Pidge answered immediately.

“What? C’mon, Pidge, I haven’t even told you what we need help with, yet!” Lance complained.

“And you don’t need to,” she replied stubbornly. “I’m not going out into the desert, to a ghost town _you_ swear isn’t haunted, to help out _your_ boyfriend, who _I’ve_ never actually met. No. No way.” She turned back to her hand of cards, studying them carefully so she didn’t have to look at Lance’s pitiful expression.

“Hunk? My buddy? My best buddy?” Lance pleaded, turning hopefully to Hunk.

“Sorry, Lance, but I’m with Pidge on this one. I know you want to help him because you like him and he means a lot to you, but… I’d rather _meet_ him at least before I stick my neck out for him.”

“Hunk, you’re bluffing and it’s super obvious,” Pidge piped up. “Cards in.”

“Oh, man!” Hunk complained, tossing his totally junk cards in the middle as Pidge claimed the mound of quarters.

“So you’re really just not going to help him?”

“Look, if he wants our help--” Pidge started, but Lance cut her off.

“Actually, he didn’t want your help. I had to practically beg him to let me ask you for help.”

“Okay, well if you want us to help him, he has to come to _us_ , not the other way around. If he does that, then fine, we’ll see what we can do. But until then, no way.”

~~~~~

“So that’s how it is,” he told Keith over the phone the next day.

“Well, I don’t blame them. But didn’t you say they’ve got your back for anything?”

“They’ve got _my_ back. It’s _you_ they’re not sure about.”

“So you want me to drive to the city just to meet them?”

“It’s not a permanent thing, just _one_ day. It’s not like I’m introducing you to my parents-- though they do want to meet you, by the way-- just my two lovably geeky friends. We _need_ help, Keith. I’ll even drive you there myself, so you aren’t super obvious on your bright red motorcycle. Please?”

A heavy sigh crackled through the phone line. “Alright. But if this all goes wrong, I’m taking you down with me.”

“Nowhere else I’d rather be.”

~~~~~

That Friday, as Lance drove out to the desert shack, he felt a bit overwhelmed with anticipation. Anxiety, maybe, too. He wouldn’t actually be _staying_ at the shack for very long, just picking Keith up and leaving right away, reminiscent of when he would just come out there to drop off a package and run. It felt strange. But there was something else gnawing at him, even as Keith opened the door to the passenger seat and climbed in.

Pretty much as soon as the car was back into drive and they were headed off down the broken road, Lance reached out with one hand so that it was against Keith’s. In a few minutes, he pulled it back, returning it to the wheel, only to do it again a few minutes later.

After a good five times of this happening, Keith finally asked, “Lance, what are you doing?”

“I-um… it’s stupid.”

“Well, it usually is.”

Lance shot him a look before looking back through the windshield. “I’m checking that you’re still here.”

“Why? You think I’m going to jump out?”

“No! Just… have this weird thought that if I take you out of the desert, you’ll disappear. I know it’s dumb… maybe I’ve seen too many movies… but I have to check, just to make sure.”

Keith bit back a smile. “Lance, I’m _not_ a ghost. I’m flesh and blood. You should know that better than anyone.”

Lance felt a flush spread from his cheeks all the way down his neck. “Well, when you put it _that_ way…”

~~~~~

Pidge and Hunk had arrived first, having only to take the bus from their own apartments to his, and then walk up to the door, standing outside it when Lance and Keith arrived. Pidge was talking about her recent phone call with her brother, who was really trying to persuade her to take the job in Germany.

“Look, I like quantum physics, but I really think coding is more my style,” she complained as she leaned against the wall. “Or robotics. Robotics is fun.”

They turned when they heard Lance and Keith come up to the apartment door, both of their eyes immediately going to Keith.

Pidge put on a friendly smile. “You must be Lance’s mysterious desert boyfriend. We’ve heard a lot about you,” she said, stretching out a hand. “I’m Pidge, and this guy’s Hunk.”

They shook hands while Lance opened the door, and then all four of them stepped inside, filling up the relatively small space between Lance’s kitchen area, entertainment system, bed, and dresser. The air felt kind of heavy.

“What do you think, guys? Our usual sit-and-chat game?” he asked, mainly to break the ice.

“The usual sit-and-chat game,” Hunk agreed, procuring the slightly worn decks of cards from one of the drawers in Lance’s entertainment system (which was actually jointly owned by the three of them).

Only a few minutes later they were deeply embroiled in their game of Go Fish, the slightly competitive atmosphere having dissolved some of the awkwardness.

“So, Hunk, Lance says you’re the best cook he knows. He told me I should get lessons from you,” Keith said with a small smile. “And do you have any sixes?”

“Go fish. Yeah, I’m kind of a gourmand, when I can afford it. I dunno if I can give lessons, though. I kinda tend to lose myself in what I’m doing,” he said with an embarrassed laugh.

“He’s right,” Lance supplied, looking carefully at the cards in his hand. “One time in high school, he was at my house to hang out when my parents were making dinner, and he offered to help… then he ended up cooking practically the whole thing himself. He had all of my siblings running around like sous chefs. And Pidge, gimme a seven.”

“Ugh, fine.”

Hunk reddened a little. “They didn’t seem mad, though?”

“That’s because they all love you. Alex calls you the Teddy Bear King. Not ‘prince’, but _King_. The closest I ever got to be was the princess.”

“Don’t you have _three_ sisters?” Keith asked with an amused expression.

“My sisters were playing the wizard, the dragon, and the knight. Besides, I was the prettiest one anyway.”

“They let him believe that to feel better about himself,” Pidge whispered to Keith, leaning toward him with a conspiratorial grin. “Hunk, you got any threes?”

“But he _is_ pretty,” Keith said, blinking in confusion, as Hunk handed over a card.

Pidge sighed. “Yup, he’s definitely got you.”

“Hey, Keith, you got a four?” Hunk asked. “So… Lance asked us before if we’d be okay with helping you out.. What do you need help with?”

“Go fish,” Keith said, then fell silent for a few seconds, thinking. “I’m… trying to find a connection between these rock formations out in the desert. They don’t really have anything in common, other than that they seem just a bit out of place.”

That piqued Pidge’s curiosity. “You got any pics with you?”

Keith shook his head, but Lance was already pulling out his phone. “Don’t worry, babe, I got this.”

Pidge gagged, but scooched closer so she could more clearly see the screen. “It’s… a picture of dirt. With some rocks in it.”

“Yeah, but look, the little rocks kind of look like they form a circle, don’t they? But the big ones haven’t moved at all,” Lance described, pointing to the barely-visible rim of pebbles along the photo.

Pidge squinted, frowning. “I guess, kinda?”

“What do you think caused it?”

“A whirling dervish, probably? But normally they don’t get that big. I dunno. Hunk, what do you think?”

Hunk took the phone from Lance, setting his cards onto the floor face-down. “Uh… yeah, it does kind of look like a dervish, but that doesn’t totally work, because the dirt and rocks should have kind of a spiral-y look. Actually, looking at the way the dirt is falling in straight lines across the circle, it kinda looks like magnetism. It reminds me of when we talked about Tesla in my engineering class, and this joke about rapidly firing electrons--”

“ _Hunk_ ,” Lance groaned.

“Oh, right.”

“But what would be making a perfectly circular magnetic field in the middle of the desert?” Pidge asked.

“I dunno, aliens?”

Keith and Lance both stiffened.

It wasn’t a super obvious gesture, but Hunk noticed. Because of course he did. “Why do you guys look like that? Did I say something weird?”

Oops. Lance had known that Hunk and Pidge were smart, but he had underestimated just _how_ smart they were. They’d figured out the whole puzzle just from one picture, and didn’t even realize it.

“Yeah, it’s aliens,” Keith answered, his tone flat.

Lance looked up at him in surprise. He thought they’d agreed not to tell Hunk and Pidge all of the details yet, but Keith had just kind of blurted it out.

He caught Lance’s gaze and shrugged. “You were right. If you trust them, then so do I.”

Hunk, still confused, looked back and forth between the two of them. “Uh… you guys… wanna fill me in?”

And they did, with Lance adding plenty of embellishments and Keith cutting in and saying that it did _not_ happen like that. They gave the basic rundown of everything-- from the town’s history to Shiro’s disappearance to the weird landscape. And Hunk and Pidge listened, albeit in disbelief, at first.

By the time they were finished explaining, though, Pidge’s eyes were sparkling. “You _have_ to show me the video,” she said, and Lance could practically hear the gears in her head whirring.

“Wait wait wait wait,” Hunk insisted, waving his hands in front of himself to get their attention. “I hate to be the voice of reason, always, but… this isn’t a science experiment, Pidge. Someone’s actually _missing_.”

“Yeah, I know. And that’s why we’re gonna find him. _And_ the aliens that took him. What if I find aliens before Matt does? Oh man, he’ll be _so_ mad…”

“You can’t tell _anyone_ ,” Keith reminded her. “I don’t want any of you getting in trouble because of me. But… thanks.”

“Don’t worry; my lips are sealed.”

Hunk raised his hand. “Aren’t we forgetting the important things? Like the fact that some of this is _illegal_ ? Or that we’re literally chasing after _aliens_ ? I mean, what if-- what if they find _us_ before we find _them_? What do we do then? We’ll disappear just like Shiro!”

Lance pouted at his best friend. “Hunk, _please_? If it were me, would you just give up?”

Hunk grimaced. “...okay, fine. I get it. But I’m just gonna go on the record, right here and now, and say that this is a bad idea.”

“Great!” Pidge announced, clapping her hands together. “Next week Tuesday, when we get done with work, we’ll head out to Keith’s place to do some reconnaissance. In exchange for letting me see the video, I’ll see about hooking your cameras to your computer so you don’t have to waste time checking them individually. And Hunk can try to figure out the desert phenomena. Sound like a plan?”

“I’d just like to point out that this is the craziest thing we’ve ever done, and we’ve done some crazy stuff,” Hunk piped up. “Mostly because of Lance.”

“Great!” Lance shouted with a grin. “Let’s go catch some aliens!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like to play up the cute.


	7. Happy Birthday

If you want to know the advanced scientific details about all that Pidge and Hunk found or made for the sake of the search, Lance was _not_ the person to ask. He understood that it had something to do with weird magnets and special light, but that was pretty much it.

There was no time to play around or flirt the first time Pidge and Hunk came out into the desert. Pidge was _way_ too eager to do all of this, considering how unwilling she was to help out initially.

The first thing they did after getting out there with all of their equipment shoved into the trunk and backseat of Lance’s car was split up-- Keith took Hunk on his motorcycle to the places in the desert where they’d found strange phenomena, so he could figure out a pattern, maybe a cause, while Lance took Pidge in his car to the ghost town so that she could connect the cameras to Keith’s computer.

And then they all met up back at the shack, with Pidge complaining about how slow Keith’s operating system was, too slow to handle multiple video feeds, and Hunk going on about the presence of a metal that he’d never seen.

“I’m gonna call it LX-one-T. ‘L’ because it has some properties of Lithium, but I think it’s actually a compound and natural alloy, which makes it way more stable. But I think Pidge’ll have to check it out.”

“But that’s so _long_ ,” Lance complained as Hunk wrote the metal’s new name up on the board. “And what’s so special about…” he studied the name for a second. “-Luxite?”

“I dunno,” Hunk said with a shrug. “But I don’t think I would’ve noticed it if I weren’t looking for it. We don’t use it for anything in industry, so probably no one bothered to look. Especially not when there’s oil around.”

“Fascinating,” Lance said, half-sarcastically. “Pidge, what about you?”

“I’m gonna have to bring one of my computers in so I can handle the data load. I tried analyzing the video and Keith’s whole system froze up. But I really think we’re onto something here.”

“Wow, you guys… really know what you’re doing,” Keith remarked, looking at them in bewildered awe. “How exactly are you just FedEx workers?”

Hunk shrugged. “In this economy, actually getting a job in what you wanna do is impossible. All the oldies think they know what they’re doing better than you do, so no one’s retiring. You practically need to _be_ rich in order to _get_ rich.”

Keith turned to Pidge. “What about you? Lance said that you graduated early… didn’t you have a job lined up? You’re smart enough, it should have been easy.”

Pidge let go of the computer mouse, her fist clenched. Lance braced himself. _That_ was another thing they didn’t talk about.

She turned in the chair so that she was looking at Keith. “Did you know my name’s actually Katie?”

“Uh… no. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to call you the wrong name; that’s just what Lance always called you, so I…”

She waved her hand dismissively. “No no no, that’s not what I meant. Pidge is fine. But the _reason_ I started going by Pidge? People started taking me seriously when they thought I was a boy.”

“Wait, really?”

She swallowed. “I was in a robotics development class when I was a sophomore. It was a pretty big deal. For our final project, we were supposed to work in groups because, you know… college, and develop something revolutionary. If it was good enough, we would get to present it at a national robotics expo at the end of the year. Pretty much an instant job guarantee.”

“That… sounds like a lot of pressure.”

“It was,” she replied with a shrug. “But I _wanted_ it. I was in a group with two guys, and we poured our hearts into it.”

“Yup. She did,” Hunk supplied.

“More like worked herself to death,” Lance added. “We had to _drag_ her away from the workshop just to make sure she ate. It was crazy.”

“Yeah. Well, at least _I_ poured my heart into it. Those dumbasses in my group did barely anything while I did the research, made the design, created the program, and did trial runs to work out any bugs.”

“I remember the trial runs,” Lance said with a shiver. “Hunk, you remember when it caught on fire?”

“That was from the first time she tried to get it to hover.”

Pidge rolled her eyes. “Anyway, by the time we had to present it, it was perfect.”

“And then? ...what happened?” Keith asked, as if he could sense that this story didn’t have a happy end.

“My idiot partners? Didn’t even let me talk. Every time I tried to say something, they talked over me. A couple times, they even started _explaining it to me_. MY robot. I wanted to fucking strangle them.”

“Oh, god, Pidge, that sounds stupid.”

“It was,” she grumbled, leaning her head on the back of the chair. “But you wanna know the worst part? _They_ took it to the robotics expo. Without me. My professor called them born geniuses. Destined for great things. Didn’t even remember that I was in the group.” She looked up at Keith. “So yeah, I cut my hair, started going by Pidge after that, to see if it would happen again if people thought I was a boy. Even fooled Lance for a little while, and he’s known me since high school.”

“Guilty,” Lance admitted. “It was the glasses, okay?!”

“But, well, I didn’t get another chance like that. I graduated with high honors, but that doesn’t automatically get you a dream job.”

“Holy...shit, that still happens?”

“Yeah. Men are dicks. And the more intellectual they get, the more of their body gets consumed by their dicks.”

They all started laughing, although a bit ashamedly, since all of them except Pidge _were_ men, but were pretty comfortable knowing that she wasn’t referring to _them_ specifically, or else she probably wouldn’t be hanging out with them.

After a few more tweaks, Hunk and Pidge hauled their equipment back to Lance’s car, leaving him and Keith alone in the shack.

“Well? D’you think it was worth it to ask for their help?” he asked, tilting his head down so that their foreheads were touching.

“Yeah, definitely. But _how_ are they friends with such a moron?”

Lance grinned. “Balance, babe. Balance.”

~~~~~

From that point on, things started to move quickly. What had formerly been Tuesday game nights were transformed into research nights, where Hunk and Pidge would come and intensify the search (although plenty of times, after the day’s work was done, they would sit and play card and board games for a while). More and more tech started filling up the space inside the shack from Pidge’s computers, cameras, and backup hard drives, and a Luxite-detector Hunk had built out of spare parts from his dad’s garage.

All put together, all of the information Keith had gathered over the past  _year_ had been condensed into a neat and understandable package by Pidge and Hunk in a few weeks. The search, for the first time, was starting to feel a bit less hopeless.

“So I think they’re _mining_ , Pidge explained. “That’s why they stay in this area. They use some kind of special magnetic force to pull out the Luxite without disturbing the nearby environment, which is why the dig sites aren’t all that obvious.”

“That… makes sense, I think,” Lance said. This was actually the second time she’d tried to explain it to them, but Lance had had to interrupt her and remind her to explain it in _English_.

“Yeah, but the weird thing is that Luxite isn’t magnetic, at least not in the way we tend to understand magnets,” Hunk added. “So they’re working on the ionic scale, which _we’ve_ only been able to do in labs. It’s cool stuff, really.”

“Right,” Pidge said. “So, based on that, I figured out that the most likely places for them to show up are here, here, here and here,” she said, circling four places on the map on the wall with a red marker. “I’m not sure why we’ve only ever found it in this specific spot in the desert, but these four places are where we’ve found the highest concentrations of Luxite.”

So they’d put cameras on those sites, too, in addition to a satellite alert system that would tell them about any large flying objects over the area, which normally just meant airplanes, but also meant that if there was anything there that wasn’t supposed to be… they would know.

Hunk had commented that he was proud that they’d been able to do so much without breaking the law, except for Keith snatching the flash drive of the Skype video, but Pidge had ashamedly admitted that she’d had to do some hacking in order to set up the satellite alert system.

“Pidge! We _talked_ about this!”

“It’ll be worth it in the end! I promise!”

Hunk had also demanded that Keith and Lance get proper riding gear if they were going to ride Keith’s motorcycle around so much, especially a helmet, because they could totally _die_ if the bike flipped. They’d reluctantly agreed, which put a decent dent in Lance’s move-to-the-coast money. But that was fine.

Even as fast as things were moving thanks to Pidge and Hunk, Fridays (and Saturdays) still belonged just to Lance and Keith. Although he was happy that things were going forward, it felt nice to just spend some time alone with Keith again.

Sometimes they would end up playing around, Keith trying to teach Lance how to fight, and winning every single time (which irritated Lance in some ways, but was enjoyable in others). Sometimes they would drive out to the ghost town again, just out of habit. Sometimes Lance would help Keith polish his bike, or ride with him into town when he went to refuel-- Keith had a circuit of gas stations to go to for this, never in the same place twice in a row. And sometimes they would just sit and… talk. Dumb stuff, ‘what-if’ scenarios. Like what they’d be doing if they weren’t there, or if Shiro had never disappeared, or what crazy adventures Shiro might be having in space right now, or what if they were _with_ him, all four of them. Maybe some kind of space Power Rangers. Which Keith had to veto, saying it sounded stupid.

But that didn’t mean that the days all felt the same, and especially not that they were boring. Keith was full of surprises. Lance was pretty used to Hunk being the voice of reason, holding him back from doing crazy stuff. He’d never anticipated being the voice of reason himself. Like, advising Keith to _not_ gas it through a yellow light, or to calm down about someone who called him crazy about the aliens.

And sometimes the surprises weren’t at all unpleasant. Like, for instance, Keith showing up at his door one Friday afternoon, just after he’d finished work, his motorcycle helmet tucked under his arm.

“Hurry and get changed, and bring lots of water, because it’s going to be a long ride,” he’d said. He wouldn’t give too many details about that, which definitely made Lance’s curiosity burn wildly, but just the fact that _he_ had come to _Lance_ was enough for Lance to ask very few questions as he changed into his casual clothes and stuffed a bunch of water bottles and some snacks into his backpack.

He took the time to slide into his new riding jacket, and then they were off, racing down the highway on Keith’s motorcycle, leaving the city far, far behind them in a matter of minutes.

Lance sometimes tended to forget just how _big_ the desert was until he was trying to get out of it. Sure, the terrain changed from crumbly red dirt to rocky cliffs to sand and back again, but it was all desert, going on for miles and miles as he held tight to Keith, watching the world go by, wondering where they were going. Maybe Keith had found a totally new lead on Shiro. But then why hadn’t he said anything?

They stopped to refuel two times on the journey there, in addition to the multiple stops to chug down some water and go to the bathroom before returning to the road. Keith had been right-- it _was_ a long ride. Lance asked him plenty of times where they were going, but all Keith would say is that he “would find out.”

It was reaching dusk by the time he did.

You could say that he _felt_ it before he saw it. There was a kind of a shift in the air, in the wind blowing past them, in the shape of the land spread out before them. But it was plenty. It was more than enough for Lance to _know_ what it was long before he saw it, sparkling across the horizon under the silver moonlight.

The ocean.

They drove through the city, the streets still buzzing from the excitement of a usual Friday night on the town. But they didn’t stop there, heading straight to a beach park, finally coming to a stop in a parking lot so close to the water Lance could feel the sea spray on his skin.

The air smelled a bit of dead fish and tasted like salt, and Lance felt a wave of homesickness crashing down on him.

He jumped off of the bike and ran straight to the water, barely remembering to pull off his jacket, tank top, and jeans before he plunged into the waves, testing the current, feeling the warm water push against his skin, soaking his hair. He practically felt like he was home.

He came up for air, his smile huge as he turned to look for Keith. He wanted to thank him, to kiss him, to dunk him into the water.

He was sitting on the shoreline, his boots off, letting the water lap at his feet, Lance’s backpack sitting next to him.

Lance waded out of the water and plopped down next to him with a happy sigh. “I _was_ kind of wondering what the towels were for,” he said, reaching into the bag and pulling one of them out, as well as the water bottle that was wrapped in it. Keith had packed some extra things in his bag while he’d been changing.

“Surprise,” Keith said, smiling. “I wanted to give you a birthday present.”

Lance finished toweling his face and looked up. “My birthday was three weeks ago. I thought you forgot.”

“I told you happy birthday, didn’t I? I just… didn’t know what to get you for a present, so this was the best thing I could think of. I hope you like it.”

Lance kissed him, his still dripping-wet skin getting plenty of water onto Keith’s clothes. “I love you.”

Keith pulled out of the kiss, murmuring, “I thought you said you’ve never been in love.”

Lance scowled. “Way to ruin the moment.”

“I try.”

“Hey! You can’t use my own comebacks against me! That’s cheating!” he yelled, getting to his feet. “I should dump you in the water for that!”

But only a second later a spray of saltwater smacked him in the face.

“Heh. Like that?” Keith chided, one eyebrow raised in amusement, a challenge.

“Oh alright, you asked for it!” Lance shouted, and then they were locked into a full-on water war (which Lance won), which turned into a full-on brawl (which Keith won), until they both finally stumbled back onto the sand, flopping onto their backs.

Keith huffed and pointed up at the sky. “Look, it’s starting.”

“What is?” Lance asked, following Keith’s gaze up at the stars, just in time to see a flash of light streak across the sky.

“Woah! Did you see that?!”

“Um, yeah. I’m the one who pointed it out to you.”

“Right.”

Another shooting star flashed across the sky, and Lance tried to make his wish before it ended, not _quite_ making it, then tried again with the next one. _I wish Keith will find his brother._

Next to him, Keith shivered. Unlike Lance, he hadn’t had the chance to take off his clothes before running into the water, so he was now completely drenched. It was alright while they were still in the water, which was warmer than the night air, but now that they were out of it, he was starting to get cold. He began pulling off his clothes, laying them out neatly in the sand next to him, until they were both just lying there in their underwear, the water evaporating quickly off of their skin.

“Sorry you had to wait so long for your birthday present,” Keith said, twisting his fingers through Lance’s, even as he continued to look up at the sky, watching as more streaks danced across it, reflected in his eyes. “But the Perseids happen in mid August, not late July.”

“Y’know, I wasn’t really that mad that you forgot. I just figured you were busy with the search. You really outdid yourself."

“I think you deserve it.”

Lance blushed. Keith’s extra-forward nature did _things_ to him. The unrestrained, pure honesty was so hard to handle. He loved it. “This means I’m gonna have to think of something even _better_ for your birthday, doesn’t it.”

“Yup.”

“Damn it.”

They lay in silence for a while after that, watching the night sky dance with light. At some point, they pulled a small blanket from the bag, wrapping it around their shoulders, in a bubble of quiet. They weren’t the only ones there on that beach, watching the meteor shower, but it felt like they were. For them, it was a peaceful moment where the sky was something special and happy for once, to be savored. To be lived. To be loved.

They stayed that way until dawn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Regarding the part about Pidge, I just want to clarify that I in no way want to disrespect her gender identity, or those who identify as truly transgender. I just wanted to keep the reason for her name-change in the same spirit as for the show. Also I really freaking hate mansplaining.


	8. Moving On

“Mcclain, this is is the twenty-fourth time you’ve been late!”

Lance winced, already halfway in the door of his delivery truck, trying to escape before the shift manager saw him. Too slow, apparently.

He turned, looking down with a forced smile. “You sure? Twenty-four sounds like a _really_ big number. It can’t be more than ten.”

“ _Twenty-four_ ,” he repeated, glaring up at Lance with his arms crossed. “And that’s _not_ including all of the times Garett and Holt covered for you. Don’t think I didn’t notice.”

For emphasis, he pulled up the time clock on his smartphone. “Let’s see… Mcclain… Sunday, July 30th, a full hour late. Sunday, July 16th, fifteen minutes late. Sunday, July 2nd, half an hour late. Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, over and over again for the past eight months, and you’ve only gotten worse. The hell is wrong with you?”

“I have… something important to do on Saturday nights?”

His shift manager rolled his eyes. “Oh, please. I know you’re going out to see some girl every week, starting Friday nights. You _used_ to spend so much time out on deliveries every day because customers liked to keep you, but all of a sudden you started rushing back. Doesn’t take much to figure out you got a girl.”

Lance fought back a grin, keeping his face as neutral as possible as he stepped out of his truck and down onto the floor, still looking down at his manager. “Sir, I am being absolutely honest when I say that I do _not_ have a girlfriend.”

“Uh-huh,” he snorted. “You _know_ we have a three-strikes policy, Mcclain. The only reason I’ve let you off as much as I have is because customers like you so much that they choose us over UPS. But I can’t keep covering for you, and neither can your friends. We can’t call ourselves the Federal _Express_ if our deliveries keep coming late.”

“Alright, sir, I’ll keep that in mind. Now can I get to work? You’re kinda keeping me for a while. Too much longer and I’ll be pretty late for my deliveries.”

He knew his manager’s face was going livid with rage, but he didn’t stay to watch it happen, already in his truck with the key in the ignition before he could respond.

“I’m serious, Mcclain! One more time and you’re fired!”

~~~~~

Not that Lance really needed to worry about “one more time” that much. He’d already saved up more than enough money to move to the coast, even if he lost his job right that moment. Technically, all he had to do was pack up his stuff and leave, but… he couldn’t just do that.

He’d spent a whole eight years craving to get out of the desert, and now he couldn’t just up and go.

He’d been late that day because he and Keith had stayed up all night on Friday watching the meteor shower, listening to the waves lapping at the shore, and hadn’t returned to the desert shack until late on Saturday afternoon, let alone when Lance had finally returned to his apartment.

It was kind of hard for him to believe it himself, but he’d almost forgotten about his desire to move to the coast, as wrapped up as he had become in his life in the desert, hunting aliens with Pidge, Hunk… and Keith. But that short time at the beach, playing in the water, had aggressively awoken that desire, a craving that, for the first time, he hadn’t felt for months.

And now it was back, stronger than ever before, but different now. Everything was different now. He’d known he was way past the point of no return for some time now, but he only ever found himself diving deeper. He couldn’t believe he’d forgotten all about his dream. He couldn’t allow himself to stay stuck in this place. He needed to move forward. But… he didn’t want to do it alone. And that was the most important change.

Lance often wondered what Keith would be like if he allowed himself to live like a normal young adult. Cursing the ruined economy, struggling to pay rent, going to protests and Pride parades.

It was weird, but Keith felt like someone who could make things happen. Not in the same kind of genius way that Hunk and Pidge were, but just in a kind of… motivational way. He never stopped to think whether he could or should do something… he just _did_ it, running full tilt, so focused on his task that he would not leave it until it was done, whether it was fighting, fixing his roof, coming up with spontaneous dates… or finding his brother.

Keith’s grim determination in everything he did seemed like the kind of thing necessary in order to fix the problems plaguing this trashbag of a country. He was like a full-on bonfire, bright and hot and fierce, capable of casting away darkness and shadow and doubt and fear. He could be doing so much if only he wasn’t out there in the desert, endlessly searching.

Lance knew that Keith would _never_ give up looking. It was part of what he loved about him. But… he could feel that it was starting to wear at him, that burning light seeming to dim just a bit every time another lead turned into a dead end, every week that passed by without another clue. He couldn’t stand to see that light burn out. Something had to change.

~~~~~

"What, you're  _quitting_?!" Pidge shouted, her inventory list falling from her hands and scattering across the floor.

"Yeah. I don't really think I can promise I won't come in late again, so I figure I'd better quit before I get fired, if I still want to get a job after I move." He leaned against Pidge's desk, turning to Hunk. "You still wanna come with, buddy?"

Hunk hesitated, his eyes flicking back and forth between Lance and Pidge. "Well, yeah, but isn't this... kinda sudden?"

"It's really not," Pidge said with an injured sigh, crouching down to retrieve the fallen papers. "He's been working on it since he first moved here. I guess we just kind of... forgot about it."

"I mean, we still haven't found Keith's brother," Hunk continued, "we thought we were getting close in the beginning, there, but all we've been able to do for the past month is wait. You really gonna leave  _now_?"

"No, not quite yet. I haven't put in my two weeks yet. I just wanted to let you guys know that I was thinking about it. I'm gonna hand it to the manager on my way out, but I think I'll still stick around for a little while, since I've got... things I have to do, first."

"You don't want to leave without Keith," Pidge guessed, leaning forward at her desk. "You really think you can make him come with you  _after_ you've helped him finally get tangible evidence that his brother's out there?"

"I can't  _make_ him come with me," Lance replied, clenching a fist so tightly that his knuckles whitened. "But I kind of wish he didn't have to live like a ghost out in the desert. He's worth more than that."

"Well... good luck, Lance," Hunk said, not a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

"Thanks, man."

~~~~~

They were sitting in the shack the next Friday afternoon, their empty bowls of macaroni-and-cheese-with-broccoli-and-something having been cast away long before watching _Moana_ on Netflix on one monitor while keeping an eye on the cameras and satellite alert system on the others. It was a quiet day, just like so many of them had been, lately. Just waiting, hoping for something to happen.

Lance was leaning against Keith, his eyelids drooping as Keith absentmindedly ran his fingers through Lance’s hair, his eyes still flicking back and forth between the movie and the camera feeds.

Lance loved _Moana_ more than he cared to admit, especially now. In weird ways, he felt a lot of parallels between the movie and their own situation. Craving the sea, figuring out their own self-worth, and realizing that who they have become might not be who they are. It was too much for him to think about. He couldn’t keep… waiting. When the credits began to roll, Lance finally said it.

“Keith, I’m gonna move away soon.”

Keith froze as if turned to stone, his fingers going still in Lance’s hair. “That’s… great! You finally get to move away from this stupid desert, like you’ve wanted for so long.”

But Lance heard the crack in his voice. “I want you to come with me,” he said, sitting up.

Keith pulled away, getting up and wrapping his arms around himself as if for protection. “I can’t. I still haven’t found Shiro.”

“Keith, it’s been two whole years since he disappeared. Don’t you think it’s time to… move on?”

This definitely hit a switch. Keith whipped around, his eyes wild. “You don’t believe me. After all of this time? What were you doing, just playing along?”

“No! Damn it, Keith, I wanted to help you! I still do!”

“So then why are you trying to get me to give up?!”

“YOU CAN’T KEEP WASTING YOUR LIFE OUT HERE!” Lance suddenly shouted, getting to his feet and grabbing him by the shoulders and looking straight into those eyes, the color of the night sky he seemed to be forever lost in. His breath was coming out in harsh rasps, each one of them hurting, because damn, he hated that look in Keith’s eyes. That look like he was being betrayed, when that was the opposite of what he wanted to do.

“I believe you. Me, Hunk, and Pidge… we all do,” he said, dropping his voice to just above a whisper. “I just… want you to be happier. You’re a fucking gift to this stupid world, you know that? God, everyone I know is just annoyingly talented, and then there’s me. But you know what? That’s fine. I get to sit back and watch them all be amazing. I want to do that for you, too. But you can’t do that out here. I know you want to find your brother. And… I’m not even saying you have to give up looking for him. Hell, I don’t _want_ you to. I just… think he’d want more for you than this.”

There was a long silence as Keith looked past him, around the shack, the evidence of all of the work they’d done, the time they’d spent together: the conspiracy theory wall, Hunk’s luxite detector, Pidge’s camera and satellite feeds. The mini-fridge Lance had brought him after his old one had broke. The boards nailed over the holes in the roof. The tangled bedsheets from endless night together. There were so many memories in that tiny place.

Keith sighed, dropping his head against Lance’s collarbone. “...You’re right. He wouldn’t want this.”

“So… come with me? Please?”

“Yeah. But… before I go, I want to go out and look for Shiro. One last time. Okay?”

Lance should have felt happy, but he didn’t. The least he could do was this. “Yeah. Let’s see if we can find some aliens.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kind of a short chapter this time, but I hope you enjoy it!


	9. Special Delivery

Lance spent the entire week thinking about their final search. What was the plan? Were they going to change tactics completely, or just follow the same old routine? He had a feeling that this search _had_ to be special, so when they finally left, they could honestly say that they’d done every last possible thing they could.

Lance briefly thought about not inviting Hunk and Pidge, just keeping the final search between him and Keith, but he decided that that just wasn’t right. The two of them had worked hard and contributed a lot-- they deserved to know.

He managed to come into work on time the following Sunday, at least, although his mind kept wandering the entire time he was doing the deliveries, badly enough that he almost ran _several_ red lights, and didn’t even bother to act charming for any of his customers who opened their doors when he arrived. But what did it matter? He only had one more week anyway.

After work, he told Hunk and Pidge, and they all agreed that on Tuesday, they would make a plan together, and on Friday, they would commence the final search.

Although everyone seemed to feel a bit unsettled by the idea of ending the search, and Keith and Lance moving away to the coastline (to be followed by Hunk a little bit later, once he settled his own situation), Pidge was definitely the most upset. She didn’t make nearly as many jokes mocking Lance as usual, and those she did were especially biting. She still seemed eager to pursue the search, but there was definitely something wrong, and finally, when he was picking her and Hunk up on Tuesday afternoon to head to the shack and start planning, Lance couldn’t hold back his curiosity anymore, and asked her about it.

“I just feel… kinda like I’m being left behind,” she answered, tucking her legs in and resting her head on her knees in the backseat of the car, despite the seatbelt. “I always felt like I was a bit ahead of the rest of you guys, y’know?”

Lance frowned at her in the rearview mirror. “Gee, thanks.”

“I don’t mean it like that,” she scolded. “It was fun, being at the same level as you guys, even though I was two years younger. I just kind of imagined I’d be leaving before any of you did, back when we were in high school. I never thought you guys would be moving on without me.”

“Pidge, if you want, you can come with us,” Hunk offered. “We never said you couldn’t, or that we didn’t want you to.”

She shook her head. “No… thanks for the offer, but I think I need to move forward on my own, too. I can’t have _Lance_ of all people passing me up. That would just be embarrassing.”

“Ouch. Love you too, Pigeon.”

“ _Stop_ calling me that!”

~~~~~

They spent a long, long time at the shack, figuring out what their last search was going to look like. Looking over the results of their research over the past year-- _all_ of it, in detail, to come up with the clearest, easiest strategy.

Hunk and Pidge decided that they would stay back in the shack, monitoring all of the cameras and sensors, and the satellite feed, while Lance and Keith actually physically _searched_. Although Lance had a feeling that they didn’t want to encroach on the two of them more than they needed to.

Hunk managed to re-work a bluetooth headset so it could be used like a comm link, joking that it felt like they were special agents on a secret mission, and they all kind of had to agree. And to think, three of them had just been FedEx workers. Well, still were, technically.

The plan wasn’t really that complicated. Keith would carry Hunk’s Luxite detector with him while he and Lance worked their way to each of the spots Pidge had listed as most likely to have alien activity, so that they would be able to catch any sudden changes. Lance would be in charge of the bluetooth comm link, keeping the information flow at an even back-and-forth. Hunk and Pidge would be updating them constantly.

He doubted, even after they did all of this, that they’d actually feel satisfied leaving this place behind, if they didn’t find anything. But he agreed that it was something they had to do.

On Friday night, the plan went into action. The two pairs parted ways, Lance and Keith heading out into the desert night time, Hunk’s voice in Lance’s ear.

“So when are you planning on turning the Luxite detector on?” Hunk asked.

“Oh, yeah, ri-AHHHHH!!”

Keith jumped from Lance’s scream, one hand already on the hilt of his knife, the other weighed down by the machine.

Lance pointed out across the desert, where a pair of yellow eyes watched them from the shadows. Keith sighed in relief, letting go of his knife. “Don’t be so on edge. It’s just a coyote.”

“That is _not_ comforting to me,” Lance shot back.

“Why?”

“Don’t you know that ‘coyote’ is slang for ‘border patrol’? That is scary to me!”

“I thought you were a legal citizen.”

“I _am_ , but they don’t know that. Anyway, we are in the desert _at night_ , so I’m sorry for being a little tense.” But he did pause and take a few deep breaths.

“Guys, the detector,” Hunk reminded him through the comm link.

“Oh, yeah. Keith, we should turn the machine on.”

Keith pressed buttons until it turned on, coming to life with a slight hum and some dim light from the gauges. It beeped slightly, and then more strongly, as Keith turned.

It had never beeped quite that much before. “Hunk, Pidge, are you getting this?” he asked through the audio feed.

“Yeah, this has never happened before,” Hunk said, even though it was obvious.There was a shuffling sound, and then it was Pidge’s voice coming through.

“The detector’s getting readings from _everywhere_. Not very strong-- it looks like it’s just trace elements, but they’re scattered all over the area. Unless Hunk’s detector is malfunctioning.”

“Hey, my machine works just fine!” Lance heard shouted from off the line.

“So then why the sudden-? Oh wait! The meteor shower!” she suddenly exclaimed, followed by rapid clicking and typing. “I didn’t even think about it because nothing big tends to come through, but there’s almost nothing out here in the atmosphere to stop the cosmic dust from the meteorites from landing in the desert, since so many of them burn up in the atmosphere. And we know that a lot of the densest metals on Earth come from meteors.” She paused, and Keith and Lance stopped walking, waiting for more.

“Yeah, if I really look close through the cameras, I can see _tiny_ divots all over. They look just like wind marks and animal burrows, and they’re already half buried by the wind, but I think that’s it.”

Lance relayed this to Keith as well as he could.

“Well, what should we do, Pidge?” Keith asked, seriously. Lance smiled a bit to himself. It was funny how quickly they’d changed, from not trusting each other at all, to trusting each other completely to know what to do. He was so happy his boyfriend and his friends were so close.

“Continue toward the nearest red zone,” she said, red zones being the places they had designated as having the highest concentrations of Luxite, before the meteor shower. “Hunk and I will monitor the readings.”

They continued walking, the Luxite detector’s gauges illuminating the desert around them. In his ear, Hunk and Pidge’s voices dulled to a low hum, talking to each other but not to Lance.

“So I guess you had pretty good instincts about the meteor shower,” Lance joked. “You just used it for the wrong thing.”

“I don’t regret it,” Keith replied.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

They reached the first red zone, flicking on Lance’s flashlight and looking around. A few desert animals skittered away from the light, but otherwise, everything was still. Even the detector wasn’t beeping any more than it had their entire walk through the desert.

“No canoodling-- I can see you on camera,” Hunk announced in Lance’s ear.

“Canoodling? Seriously, Hunk, how old _are_ you?”

“Hey, don’t judge me.”

“We are _not_ canoodling. But we can start if you want,” he joked with an evil grin.

“Oh, shut up, Lance,” Pidge scolded. “We’re getting a reading north of your--”

She was interrupted by a sudden siren noise erupting around her, loud enough that it stung Lance’s ear.

“Agh, what the hell?!” he shouted, pulling the headset away from his face. Keith looked at him oddly, and he held it up so he could hear the siren before returning it to his own ear, wincing.

“It’s the satellite alert system!” Pidge shouted.

“Really? It’s never done that before,” Keith replied.

“Uh, guys?” Hunk attempted.

“Whatever, just turn it off!” Lance shouted.

“It only does that if it’s an unidentified object!” Pidge shouted back.

“What, seriously?!”

“GUYS!” Hunk shouted, breaking Lance and Pidge’s argument, just as the siren was silenced. “Look _up_.”

And Lance did, grabbing Keith’s arm and staring up at the stars, his heart pounding.

“ _What,_ what’s going on?!” Keith complained, following Lance’s gaze.

At first glance, Lance didn’t see it. And then his eyes adjusted and he realized that the inky black spot in the sky, concealing the stars, was _not_ a cloud. And it was getting closer. Keith took in a sharp breath, dropping the detector in surprise.

Lance let out a trail of expletives, only just then hearing the humming coming from above them. They were in the middle of a flat, wide open space. There was nowhere to hide, nowhere to run. All they could do was stand there and wait.

The hum loudened to a roar, overwhelming anything Lance heard from his earpiece. The black shape hovered just a few dozen feet above them, falling still.

Lights flashed on, temporarily blinding Lance and Keith. When Lance could see again, blinking the spots out of his eyes, he realized that this couldn’t be the same ship they’d seen in the Skype video. The shape was all wrong, and where that one had emitted nothing but violet light, this one glowed with a blue so vibrant it was hard to look at. But either way, it didn’t look like any kind of human aircraft he’d ever seen.

There wasn’t really anything for Lance to do except slip his hand into Keith’s and wait, still in disbelief about what he was seeing.

A circular hatch opened in the bottom of the ship, through which dropped… a robot. It fell slowly, drifting to the ground and landed so lightly that it didn’t disturb the dirt. It was _huge_ \-- ten feet tall, at least, and looked somewhere between one of the Cybermen from Doctor Who and a droid from Star Wars. Under one arm, it held a big box, “big” meaning probably six feet high.

“Who… _what_ are you, and what do you want?” Keith asked, leaning forward, stepping over the ruins of the Luxite detector, although not letting go of Lance’s hand.

The robot turned its head to look at him, its “eyes” flashing for a second. And then it spoke, in an oddly friendly customer service voice. Lance _knew_ that voice. He used it all the time at work.

“Hello! I represent the Voltron delivery service. Same-cycle delivery guaranteed, fastest in the universe.”

Lance’s mouth dropped open.

“I have a special delivery here for a Mr. Keith Kogane. Is that either of you?” the robot asked, still sounding artificially friendly.

Keith blinked up at it in stunned silence until Lance nudged him. “O-oh, right, that’s me. I’m Keith Kogane.”

“Wonderful!” the robot cheered, and a panel in its leg opened, revealing a holo-screen. “If you can just sign here, I can hand you your package and be on my way. I must say, your system is quite far from my normal delivery route.”

Lance wasn’t sure if he should laugh or have a heart attack. He never thought he’d find himself relating to a giant alien robot, but here he was. “Sorry for the inconvenience,” he found himself saying, unable to stop himself from laughing as Keith signed his name on the holoscreen and then stepped back.

The robot’s panel snapped closed, and it leaned forward and gently set its box down onto the ground in front of them. “Be careful with that. It’s marked fragile. Thank you for your business!” it said, already starting to rise through the beam of light.

“Wait!” Keith shouted. “Do you know anything about my brother?! His name is Takashi Shirogane. He was taken from this planet.”

The robot scoffed. “Oh, it’s probably that corrupt Galra Mining Company. They keep coming here hoping that they won’t get seen by the locals so they won’t have to get a license, but I see they failed. I guess I’ll have to report it. Bound to happen eventually. They always want to cheat just because they don’t want to lose to their competitor, Blade of Marmora Inc. But what can you do?” It vanished inside the ship, the hatch shutting behind it. Only moments later, the lights flicked off and it rose into the night sky, vanishing into the stars, leaving them with nothing but darkness, and a huge box.

Keith and Lance stood there in stunned silence for a good minute or so, just staring at the box and trying to process what had just happened.

And then, finally, he shook his head and said, “should we… open it?”

Keith blinked, moving forward toward the box. “I don’t know how. It’s not exactly cardboard and tape.”

They both looked at it, carefully, wondering what to do. Actually it looked like it was made of some kind of plastic, with a few knobs sticking out in places.

Keith let go of Lance’s hand and reached out to press on one of the knobs. When he did, the box began to creak, and hiss, and they both jumped back just as the front of the box fell open, clattering into the dirt between them.

There was a coughing from inside, and Lance grabbed his flashlight, shining it on the inside of the box.

It was a person. A human man, with spiked black hair, a strong chin, sharp cheekbones, and what would have been a reassuring smile, if he’d been smiling. Six feet tall, with a prosthetic right arm.

Keith made a slightly strangled sound. “Shiro?!”

The person inside opened his eyes, stumbling out of the box. “Hey, Keith.”

Keith launched at him, tackling him straight into the dirt with a hug, screaming and half-crying at once, croaking, “I didn’t know if I’d see you again.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m back. You would not _believe_ the things that have happened to me,” Shiro said, patting at the back of Keith’s head. His voice sounded strained, exhausted.

Lance kind of didn’t want to ruin the brothers’ reunion, but he couldn’t help but ask, “did you seriously _mail_ yourself back to Earth?”

Shiro groaned, blinking up at Lance, as Keith let go of him and moved off to kneel in the dirt next to him. “Who… who are you?”

“Uhhh…” Lance wasn’t exactly sure how to answer. The delivery guy?

Fortunately, Keith answered for him. “He’s my boyfriend.”

Shiro sat up straight _immediately_ , as if he hadn’t woken up from an alien abduction-induced coma only a few seconds before. “Oh, is that so? Whatever happened to ‘I’m gonna stay single for the rest of my life, Shiro’?”

“...I made an exception.”

“Why?” He turned to look critically at Lance. “Did you do something weird to my brother?”

“He held a knife to my neck and I kind of liked it, so I stuck around… hey, aren’t we getting off-topic here?! Shouldn’t we be taking you to a hospital or something?!”

“No, no hospital. I’ve been gone long enough, they probably declared me dead. I just… need some rest.”

Hunk’s voice erupted in Lance’s ear. He’d kind of forgotten he’d been wearing the headset. “OH MY GOD I CAN’T BELIEVE THAT JUST HAPPENED. Pidge, did that seriously just happen?”

“Yes, Hunk, it did.”

“And we found Keith’s brother! We actually did it!” he erupted into hysterical laughter, which Lance could only wait out before trying to get his attention.

“Hunk, buddy, I need you to get my car and come to us, okay? Shiro looks too beat up to make it out there himself, and we can’t carry him the whole way.”

“R-right. I’ll be right there. Just… sit tight, okay? I’m handing the line off to Pidge.”

He did, but Lance still heard the ecstatic “WHOO-HOO!” from off the line.

Lance leaned down to Shiro again. “Our friends are on their way. They just want us to wait here for a while."

Shiro crossed his arms, still looking at him critically. “So how long have you been, you know… a thing?”

Keith groaned. “Seriously, Shiro?! You were abducted by aliens and all you can ask about is my relationship?!”

“I’m sorry, I’m just surprised.”

“He helped me find you,” Keith stated, quietly, and Shiro went still. He took a deep breath, leaning back on his hands, and looking up at the sky. “Okay, I get it. I won’t ask any more questions for now.”

Just then, Hunk arrived in Lance’s car, and the three of them helped Shiro into the backseat. As soon as they were heading back to the shack, he asked Shiro dozens of questions, none of which he would answer until everyone was there to listen.

Back at the shack, Pidge had plenty of questions, too, which Shiro answered patiently, one at a time. Keith and Lance just felt _tired_.

But through all of the questions, they were able to piece together what happened to Shiro.

Like the delivery bot had said, the spaceship that had taken Shiro belonged to the Galra Mining Company, whose automated systems scanned for the Luxite left in the area by the yearly Perseid meteor shower, and magnetically mined it straight into their ship. Apparently, the manufacturer of his prosthetic arm had used some Luxite when making it, so when the ship came through, it picked up Shiro by accident, already far away from Earth before the Galra employees had realized he was there. Rather than taking him back, they took his arm for the Luxite, and told him he’d have to work off his “debt” from holding precious minerals without the company’s permission.

He’d managed to escape, finding himself with Blade of Marmora Inc. instead. They promised to get him home somehow, and gave him a cool new prosthetic arm, pretty close to his old design, but its fingers were even more responsive. It felt just like his real hand sometimes.

“And then they mailed you back to Earth?” Pidge asked, a whole bunch of equipment hooked up to the box Shiro had arrived in, analyzing its material.

Shiro shrugged. “It was inexpensive, and delivery guys don’t ask that many questions. They put me in cryostasis just as a precaution, but… here I am.” He nudged Keith, sitting next to him on the bed. “Sorry it took so long, bud.”

“But… I don’t get it,” Keith said. “How could you just come back, after all that adventure?”

Shiro laughed. “Honestly? I’ve had enough adventure for two lifetimes already. I just… wanted to come home.”

He looked around at all of them in turn. “Thanks, all of you, for trying to find me. But we have to keep this quiet for a while. I really never want to see the Galra Mining Company _ever_ again. So we should probably get out of here before they come back for the year.”

“Good, because we were planning to,” Lance piped up.

Shiro turned to him. “Really? Where?”

Lance smiled. “How do you feel about the ocean?”


	10. Home

There’s something about a rickety shack in the middle of nowhere that screams “horror movie”, at least until you fill it with memories and love and friends and family. By the time they had everything packed into the backseat of Lance’s car, and were ready to leave for the last time, it didn’t really seem that frightening to him at all, despite what had happened.

He would even miss it.

Before they moved to the coast, permanently, Lance made good on his promise, and introduced Keith to his family at his going-away party, nervously announcing that they were moving in together.

He’d been afraid that his family would yell at him for not having introduced Keith sooner, but they didn’t. They seemed more… relieved, than anything. Even his socially conservative  _ abuela _ , who always used to rail against sinful gays, didn’t have anything nasty to say. She even apologized for acting so hateful, now that she could see just how happy her grandson was. That it still wasn’t easy for her to accept, but she was happy for him.

And Lance’s family surrounded Keith eagerly, almost a bit too much so, greeting him with hugs and presents, asking him dozens of questions about how he was able to get the capricious Lance to settle down, and he didn’t really have an answer.

And the little kids, Lance’s siblings included, ate up their stories about chasing aliens through the desert to find a missing hero, and Lance embellished quite a few details, and this time, Keith didn’t try to stop him, allowing the stories to become wildly larger-than-life. Not that they didn’t seem that way already.

But it made him genuinely, purely happy. Everything finally felt like it all… fit. His family, his boyfriend, his friends, and their families. Aliens be damned, and never get in the way of a happy life ever again.

~~~~~

“So, long story short, I don’t speak German, but I do speak robot,” Pidge said through the Skype feed with a satisfied smile. “Although they don’t know that I got some of my ideas from analyzing alien tech. What about you guys?”

“It looks like Hunk’s restaurant is doing just fine,” Lance answered. “I thought I’d have to help out when he first got started, but it looks like Shiro’s got that covered. Ladies flock to the place.”

Explaining Shiro’s sudden reappearance to the authorities had been… difficult, to say the least. They’d finally settled on the story that the water out in that part of the desert might be hallucinogenic or something, causing Keith to imagine the abduction and Shiro to have wandered through the desert until he crossed into Mexico (although they had no explanation for how he got past the Coyotés, but Lance just rolled with it). But that had just launched an investigation over whether he’d defected to foreign powers, considering his SpecOps experience. After months of headaches and repeated questioning, their lives were finally starting to settle back down, and Shiro was making himself plenty comfortable in the apartment down the hall from them.

“Oh, is he not going back to real estate?” Pidge asked.

“He’s just taking a break for a while,” Keith explained with a smile. He’d been a bit hesitant to use Skype for a while, since the last time he’d used it, he’d lost his brother, but eventually they’d been able to message Pidge, all the way in Germany, mainly because they figured that if she  _ did _ get abducted, she might even be happy about it. “He figures he owes us for looking for him for so long, so he’s helping Hunk get on his feet before he starts his new job.”

From behind Pidge, they saw the door open, revealing her older brother, Matt. “Hey, Katie? Can I get your opinion on something?”

Pidge turned around, calling out, “Hang on, I’ll be just a sec.” She came back to the screen, smiling apologetically. “Sorry, guys, but my brother’s useless without me.”

“No problem, Pigeon,” Lance answered. “Go be awesome.”

“Yeah, sure. Have fun, but not to much fun, don’t go in late to work, and all that stuff,” she said, then waved and killed the video feed.

As soon as the screen went black, Keith leaned forward and clicked the laptop shut, then wrapped his arms around Lance’s shoulders and flopped backwards on the bed, carrying both of them down with him. He grumbled, burying his face into Lance’s nightshirt.

“Hmmmmmmph… time to go to sleep,” he grumbled, his breath warm against Lance’s collarbone.

Lance reached out, happily pulling his boyfriend closer and kissing his forehead. “I’ve got to go to work.”

“No you don’t.”

“No I don’t,” Lance immediately agreed, even though it wasn’t true. He really  _ did _ need to go to work. Beaches didn’t oversee themselves, and rent didn’t pay for itself, either. But it would be nice if it did, because he loved moments like this, just cuddling under the sheets, revelling in the fact that they actually had each other, for keeps.

“What happened to being a morning person?” Lance teased, twirling a lock of Keith’s hair around his fingers. It was starting to get pretty long, having outgrown even mullet status.

“I’m awake, I just don’t want to get up,” Keith grumbled, pressing closer.

“You know, Pidge  _ just _ told us not to be late to work. That means you, too, Samurai.”

“Just because I work at a specialty weapons store…”

“I’m never gonna stop calling you that.”

Keith rolled over, pulling his legs up and kicking at Lance until he was pushed out of the bed, falling to the floor with a  _ thump _ , laughing the whole way down.

“Careful! You could have knocked the laptop off!” he complained, getting to his feet and moving said laptop from the top of the bed to the cardboard box that served as a bedside table, since most of their furniture money had gone into buying the bed. “Now, come on, babe, we have to at least  _ pretend _ we’re well-adjusted adults. We can get lunch at Hunk’s. Hang out with Shiro for a while.”

“Okay, but you’re paying,” Keith demanded, rolling onto his back and looking up at him.

“What? Man, I paid last time!”

“Did not.”

“Did too! Now come on and get up!”

Silence.

“Keeeeeeith, don’t pretend to be asleep.”

Silence.

Lance leaned over the bed, his hands making divots into the mattress. “Should we go to the beach after work?”

Hands reached out, yanking him down into a kiss.

“You spend all day at the beach.”

“Not with you.”

Keith snorted, kicking off the blankets and getting to his feet. “God, you are so cheesy.”

“Oh, you love it.”

“Don’t use it against me.”

~~~~~

There’s something about a city with a view of the ocean that  _ screams _ “romance movie”. Every time Lance went to work, keeping people safe from themselves (which was often), he spent as much time there as he could, especially if it was with the person he loved most.  _ No way _ was he ever going to be the poor FedEx guy stuck in the same place for years on end, not anymore. Nope. He might not be able to get out of working a low-wage job to get by until he could get his teaching license, but there was nothing wrong with spending as much time in the place he loved as possible.

Their life stopped following a regular rhythm. There were no Tuesday game nights and Friday date nights. They just floated from day to day, doing whichever activity they felt like doing. Sometimes sleeping in, sometimes trading stories with Shiro, or teaching him how to surf (he was ridiculously good at it. He now spent most afternoons surfing), sometimes spending long nights at the beach, swimming or playing or just… walking. It was cheesy and cliché, but Lance loved it.

Alien-hunting and lost brothers and mysterious shacks in the desert were all very good for making memories, and maybe sometime in the future, Lance would crave that kind of adventure again, but for right now, Lance was much happier eating fresh salmon at Hunk’s restaurant and videochatting with Pidge about her time in Germany and playing video games with Keith and Shiro. He kind of understood what Shiro meant about being tired of adventure. It was fun to be a hero, Lance didn’t deny that, but it was definitely better to be here.

“Well, it’s not home, but do you still like it better here than in the desert?” Keith asked him, settling down into the sand next to him, a towel draped over his bare shoulders.

“What are you talking about? Why wouldn’t it be home?”

“Is it?”

Lance smiled, reaching out and covering Keith’s hand with his own.

“It is now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And it's done! A "brief one-shot" that turned into a ten-chapter story, lol. Sorry about the nauseatingly sweet ending. I just... want them... to be happy...  
> Anyway.   
> Thanks so much for reading!


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